At the Imola race, Charles Leclerc earned a spot on the podium, and Carlos Sainz finished fifth for Ferrari. However, McLaren outperformed Ferrari, becoming the closest competitor to Red Bull’s Max Verstappen.
Ferrari felt they lost the chance to win during qualifying because overtaking was nearly impossible with similar tire strategies. Vasseur, a Ferrari representative, said, “I think that if we do 1-2 in qualifying, we do 1-2 in the race.”
Leclerc and Sainz qualified fourth and fifth respectively. Leclerc mentioned a problem with the power delivery setting, which caused the Ferrari cars to lose time on the straights compared to Red Bull and McLaren. Despite this, being only two tenths off in fourth place shows that F1 now has a close competition between three teams.
Verstappen’s pole time was helped by a tow from Haas’ Nico Hulkenberg, which might have prevented McLaren from securing the front row. This shows how close the competition is between the three teams.
Vasseur believes that with such a small gap, teams need to speed up their development plans. Even a tiny upgrade can make a big difference now that the rate of development is slowing under current regulations.
Vasseur said, “When you have three teams within one-tenth, every single bit can make the difference.” He emphasized that the competition will be intense in every aspect, from car setup to driver performance.
Regarding Ferrari’s upgrades, Vasseur mentioned that they need more race weekends to see how well they have performed. However, there is some frustration because McLaren seems to have matched Ferrari’s progress since their breakthrough upgrades in Miami.
While Ferrari has made progress, McLaren’s improvements have kept them closely matched with Red Bull.
