Ferrari Struggles with Inconsistent Performance on Track in Barcelona Grand Prix

In Barcelona, ​​Ferrari had the worst stage of the season – Carlos Sainz finished fifth, and Charles Leclerc, after starting from the pit lane, did not earn points. Team leader Frederic Vasseur admitted that the engineers have not yet been able to achieve stable behavior on the track from the car.

“I believe that our main problem is not in the potential for a fast lap or that the car does not fit certain types of corners,” Vasseur said after the finish of the Spanish Grand Prix. – The main problem is that we are not able to achieve stable behavior of the SF-23 on the track.

Let’s take Charles’s car as an example. He drove the first and third segments on the same composition [Hard], but on the first segment the car behaved unbalanced, and on the third segment the problems with the balance disappeared. As for Carlos, he had a good first and last stint, but lost 15 or 20 seconds in the second stint against his opponents.

It is very difficult for us to understand the causes of these problems and eliminate them, because each time the causes are different. I do not think that the difficulties in Barcelona are related to the degradation of rubber. They could be if we attacked harder, but degradation was not the main problem.

Carlos showed good pace in the last laps. This suggests that the tires have not lost efficiency. Charles, on the first segment, complained about the balance of the car from the first to the last lap.

It’s true that we look faster in qualifying on an empty track than in traffic on a race course, but in Barcelona this was not always the case. In the second stint, Carlos rode on an empty track, but his pace was a disaster.”