Miami Grand Prix – Friday Qualifying – Scuderia Ferrari Team

Miami Grand Prix – Friday Qualifying – Scuderia Ferrari Team – Cysnews

Qualifying for the Miami Grand Prix brought the usual thrilling battle down to the thousandth of a second. Charles Lecler finished second fastest and Carlos Sainz fifth. Of particular note was the performance of the Monaco driver, who entered qualifying with just three laps in free practice after having to exit his SF-24 after spinning at turn 16. The team did a great job, relying on the data from Carlos’ car, while Charles’ skills then separated him from pole position held by Max Verstappen by a tenth, Carlos Sainz was also very strong throughout qualifying, but ended up starting from the second row escaped by only 59 thousandths.

SQ3

The Ferrari duo managed the first two practice sessions, in which the rules prescribe the use of medium-hard tyres, without any problems. In the final section, which decided the first five rows of the grid, they made the most of the soft tire compounds during the single flying lap that the team opted for due to the rapid development of the track. Charles clocked a time of 1’27″749 and Carlos kept his teammate’s pace until the last sector where he lost the thousandths that kept him out of the second row with a time of 1’28″103.

Busy Saturday.

Points are awarded to the top eight drivers (8 to 1) in the 19-lap, 102.67 kilometer sprint, which starts at 12:00 local time (18:00 CEST) on Saturday. The short race will also serve as valuable information for Sunday’s 56-lap Grand Prix, as today did not bring much data on long drives. Parc ferme rules are suspended after the sprint to allow teams to work on cars for qualifying for the Grand Prix itself, which starts at 16:00 (22:00 CET).

Charles Leclerc #16

“I’m happy with today’s qualifying because I can see that the work I’ve put in over the last few weeks to improve the tire preparation has paid off. It was difficult because I only did one timed lap in free practice, so I had to go all out straight away in qualifying, but I felt comfortable in the car from the start of qualifying. Tomorrow we will go into it in a sprint, we don’t know much about the race pace yet, but hopefully we will have a good one and go into Sunday with a good chance of winning.”

Carlos Sainz #55

“It wasn’t a great Friday. The feeling in the car changed between practices and we struggled more during sprint qualifying. However, the lap on the soft tires was going more or less OK, but at turn seventeen I went for it and made a mistake that dropped me to fifth. Tomorrow we will try to recover and then we will have another chance to work on the car and turn it around for Grand Prix qualifying and the main race on Sunday.”

Fred Vasseur, Scuderia Ferrari HP Team Principal

“Today we saw a situation similar to last weekend’s qualifying, where circumstances can change massively from one compound to another, while it is very tight between the top three or four teams. Both our riders felt more comfortable on the soft compound and we can be quite happy with how it went. Charles, who did not do free practice this morning, did particularly well. Carlos matched him until the last sector where he lost some time. It’s quite difficult to have a clear idea about tomorrow’s race because we, along with many others, have not done a long ride. We will use the sprint race as part of our preparation for Sunday and see if our setup gives us an advantage in terms of tire management. We will need a good start, especially for Carlos, but I think we have a chance.”

Source: Scuderia Ferrari