LM10 wrote: ↑12 Sep 2024, 16:32
After the masterpiece from Ferrari at Monza I hope they can silence their critics once again. The last post here going with "Ferrari being Ferrari" because of their front wing choice just reminded me why I (sadly) increasingly avoid this thread.
That's a bit of a reach, implying I'm being overly negative by making a joke while also asking a legitimate question?
If Ferrari are running a different setup than everybody else, it's something to note and I think it's understandable people (me, in this case) would be interested in theorizing why.
However, one race is not enough to definitively say if Ferrari can match McLaren or not. In general, not regarding my last post but about all posts in this thread - being pragmatic isn't the same as being critical of the team. There's a reason why Leclerc repeatedly says every weekend that the last race's momentum may not carry over to this one.
That being said, I don't see them doing anything less than a podium here, unless there's some unknown factor we aren't seeing.
In other news, Leclerc's Thursday interview is an interesting read:
On street circuits, race management is much more in the hands of the driver. On other circuits, if you lock the wheels too much, there are no consequences, whereas on a track like this one, you can face huge consequences. I think it’s a circuit that suits our car well. Nothing makes me think we’ll be extremely fast or slow here, but we’ll be in line with the rest of the season. It’s a track I particularly like, where as a driver, during qualifying, you can take a lot of risks and gain lap time.
To think about the drivers’ championship, we first need to take a step forward in terms of performance, but I mostly think we need a bit of luck because we’re quite far off. For the constructors’ championship, everything is possible; we have a real opportunity, but before thinking about the title, we need to take a big step forward in terms of performance. McLaren is still the team to beat; if they maintain the same performances as in the last ten races, we have no chance. I hope the improvements we brought to Monza will help us for the rest of the season and that we can put more pressure on them.
I said that Baku and Singapore would be more indicative for the updates, but I talked to Fred and the team, and I think it will be the case from Austin onwards. But we’ve already started to see what the updates can bring by putting them in the car at Monza.
About Newey? I’m not disappointed, I would have been if we hadn’t tried. We spoke to Adrian as a team, but he ultimately made his choice, and I totally respect that. It’s obvious that he’s incredible for everything he’s achieved, but we have some very good individuals at Ferrari, and I believe much more in the group. I’m sure we have the right team to get back to the top.
