Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz has admitted that he was impressed by the speed of his team’s reaction to a sad French Grand Prix that saw Sainz and his teammate Charles Leclerc ranked 11th, according to the Spaniard. But despite the quick turnaround, Leclerc admitted that the problem could well reappear at the upcoming Grand Prix of Styria and Austria.
After Sainz and Leclerc qualified well in P5 and P7, Ferrari’s Paul Ricard races then failed when they slipped down the order and came home from the points for Ferrari’s first non-points score of the season – with functionality issues of the Ferrari SF21 tires found to be the cause.
READ MORE: Binotto says Ferrari’s Paul Ricard struggles stem from issues that should have been addressed two years ago.
In the run-up to the Styrian Grand Prix, however, Sainz said that the French race had revealed a weakness that Ferrari had “been with for some time”.
“It’s only been three full days since we had the problem and of course you can imagine that as a team, we were quite surprised,” said Sainz. “But in some ways we also knew that we had been experiencing this type of front tire degradation for some time.
Carlos Sainz: Ferrari has launched a “major investigation” after a weak French GP performance
“It is very interesting to see how such a large factory, such a large organization, get their recovery plan off the ground and figure out how we are going to approach and solve this problem,” added Sainz.
“I was pretty involved in all of the meetings and discussions about how we can do better. I’ve spent the last three days in Maranello and we definitely put together a short, medium and long term plan to see if we can do better.
READ MORE: Ferrari likely always had problems with Paul Ricard – and here’s why
“We have to experiment with different setup directions, different configurations that we can at least briefly install in the car to alleviate the problem, and then very large investigations will be initiated in the medium and long term.” to solve.”
All of this begs the question: Was the French Grand Prix an isolated incident for Ferrari or does it indicate a fundamental change in the team’s competitiveness?
Charles Leclerc says “massive fighting” at the French GP surprised Ferrari
But according to Leclerc, it’s still too early to say – the Monegasque simply underscores his hope that the team will end again this weekend and next on one of his favorite tracks at the Red Bull Ring, where he took podium places is in two of the last three races.
READ MORE: “It wasn’t necessary – but we’re cool” – Norris and Gasly bury the hatchet over the French GP scrap
“We feel like [the issue] was rather specific to France, but it is not impossible that we will find it here or next weekend, ”said Leclerc. “We don’t really know yet, and that is the whole job of the investigation, trying to understand the exact circumstances under which we have this problem and why it becomes more serious on some routes than others. This is what we are currently focusing on.
“I really enjoy this route,” he added. “It’s one of my favorites – I’ve always had good results in the past so I really hope we get a very good result this weekend.”
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