A weekend that started on the wrong foot It was clear the day before that the weekend in Austria could be difficult for Ferrari, but after Saturday’s qualifying it was conceivable to at least repeat the 2025 result, namely third and fourth behind Mercedes rather than the McLarens as was the case 12 months ago. However, at the Red Bull Ring, Lewis Hamilton took fifth place, while Charles Leclerc fell from second to eighth place and unfortunately finished last among the pilots of the top four teams. In Austria, Red Bull looked up once again, as evidenced by Verstappen’s second place and Hadjar sixth. As we underlined yesterday, Ferrari got into trouble because it made some sacrifices in the settings to close the power gap. The fact that the SF-26 had a smaller turbine than its rivals was further reinforced by the fact that it raced ‘high’. In short, if the strengths of the SF-26 were ‘magnified’, as Leclerc underlined in Barcelona, this time the weak points were particularly exposed. Also, a passage from Frederic Vasseur’s post-race statements should not be ignored: “It was a complicated weekend: we did not have a good start on Friday because we struggled in both FP1 and FP2 and were unable to complete representative race simulations.” So the weekend started with an uphill climb from Friday. Again, in the first practice session this weekend, Ferrari replaced Charles Leclerc with Dino Beganovic, completing the sessions in which the seat should be given to the young driver.
Automobile Magazine – Formula1 English, News
2026-06-29 16:30:00
Automobile Magazine, 2026-06-29 17:08:00, automobilemagazine.com.tr
Automobile Magazine – English News
Source link 2026-06-29 08:05:00
