Vasseur: “I’m happy for Leclerc, he was under pressure. Winning tomorrow? Let’s see with the strategy…”

Even in the ‘real’ qualifying sessions at Silverstone, Ferrari demonstrated its worth. Pole position did not arrive, as happened yesterday in Sprint qualifying, but Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton – in this order, with the Monegasque ahead of the Englishman – managed to gain second and third place on the grid, only losing to a phenomenal Andrea Kimi Antonelli and both putting George Russell’s other Mercedes behind them. Contrary to predictions, the SF-26 confirmed itself as the second force on the English track, quite clearly beating Red Bull and McLaren. Speaking to Sky Sport F1, Maranello team principal Fred Vasseur analyzed what happened in these spectacular English qualifying sessions. “First of all, I’m very happy with Charles’ result today – commented the French manager, starting his evaluation from the good result obtained by the Monegasque, fresh from a prolonged crisis of results – it’s his second consecutive front row, because he was already on the front row last week in Austria. It’s true that we’ve made some changes to the car, but every week there’s a slightly different car for which you have to find the right set-up and he’s getting there step by step. I’m very happy for him because I was a little behind Working calmly in these situations is not easy, but it was very strong today.” “Winning in the race tomorrow? In the Sprint the pace compared to Kimi was decent. We did 17 laps and finished about two and a half seconds behind. In battle with them it’s difficult because they have more top speed and it’s difficult for us to attack. But we’ll also see with the strategy: compared to the Sprint there will be pit stops, we can decide whether to go long or not and having two cars in front we could also decide to use different strategies. Overall this day is positive: we have Lewis’ podium in the Sprint and the first Charles row”. “Compromise qualifying to be better in the race after today’s Sprint? We didn’t actually have to make many compromises this weekend – observed Vasseur – but everyone learns something. We always try to improve and we’re not smarter than the others. You can’t touch the car between the Sprint qualifying and the Sprint race, so you have to make decisions after the sprint race, working both on qualifying and on the race pace. We saw this morning that, I’m not saying it’s simple, but here it’s possible to overtake. We had a decent pace. this morning, then it also depends on how you want to use the energy. This morning everything was quite strange because there were some riders who were 10 kilometers faster on one straight and another 10 kilometers faster on another.” “I, the actor, why did I say that we wouldn’t be competitive here? No, the truth is that we still have a deficit. Every track is different in terms of energy delivery. Today we still have a deficit in terms of power. We have certainly changed something compared to last week. The conditions are different. There are some high-speed corners before a long straight. This means that if you are stable with the chassis you can have a slightly smoother delivery. It’s a combination of several factors. It’s not just the power that counts this weekend.”

Automobile Magazine – Formula1 English, News

2026-07-04 16:51:00