Ferrari flop in Austria, Vasseur: “We didn’t do any representative long runs on Friday”

A weekend that started on the wrong foot That the weekend in Austria could be difficult for Ferrari was clear from the day before, but after Saturday’s Qualifying it was at least conceivable to repeat the 2025 result, i.e. a third and fourth position behind the Mercedes rather than the McLarens as happened 12 months ago. At the Red Bull Ring, however, Lewis Hamilton finished in fifth position, Charles Leclerc even relegated from second to eighth, sadly last among the drivers of the four top teams. In Austria, Red Bull raised its head again as demonstrated by Verstappen’s second place and Hadjar’s sixth. As we already underlined yesterday, Ferrari ran into trouble because it sacrificed something in terms of set-up to try to fill the power gap. The fact that the SF-26 has a smaller turbine than the competition was amplified by the fact that it was raced ‘at altitude’. In short, if in Barcelona the strengths of the SF-26 were ‘magnified’ as Leclerc underlined, this time it was the weak points that were particularly exposed. Also not to be underestimated is a passage from Frederic Vasseur in his post-race statements: “It was a complicated weekend: we didn’t start off on the right foot on Friday, because we struggled in both FP1 and FP2, and we weren’t able to complete representative race simulations.” The weekend therefore started off on an uphill climb starting on Friday. Also this weekend in FP1, Ferrari gave space to Dino Beganovic in place of Charles Leclerc, thus completing the sessions in which the seat must be made available to a young driver.

Automobile Magazine – Formula1 English, News

2026-06-29 16:30:00