The Italian team, Ferrari, did well in practice on Friday. But when it came to qualifying, they weren’t as fast as the other cars at the beginning of the lap to compete for the top spot on the grid.
Data from GPS shows that Leclerc’s Ferrari was 3-4 kilometers per hour slower on the straights compared to the McLarens, and even slower compared to Verstappen’s Red Bull, who got a speed boost from the slipstream behind another car.
Leclerc thought that Ferrari’s starting positions, which were third and fourth after another driver got a grid penalty, made it hard to aim for anything better than third place.
He said, “Looking back at yesterday, reanalyzing qualifying. I think we basically lost everything at the start of the lap for some reason. We had a slightly different power strategy compared to McLaren and Red Bull, and we lost everything on the run down to Turn 2 – Max, on top of that, had the slipstream.”
He also added, “This is something we’ll have to look into because, especially on a track like this, track position is absolutely everything. When you only have a tenth of a second between Red Bull, McLaren, and ourselves, we need to do everything perfectly. And the third place today cost us maybe a better result in the race.”
Talking about the upgrades Ferrari brought to the Imola race, Leclerc said it’s hard to judge them accurately at this track because of its unique demands. But he believed that the new parts, like the bodywork and wings, did what they were supposed to do based on the data.
He said, “The good thing is that everything we expected from those upgrades, we had it in terms of data. It did exactly what it was supposed to do, which is always a good thing.”
