Ferrari suffers from bouncing and reliability issues at the Red Bull Ring

Scuderia Ferrari had arrived in Spielberg with high hopes of turning its fortunes around after a tough Spanish Grand Prix. However, the Italian team lacked pace and was hindered by reliability issues.

Ferrari had enjoyed a reasonably positive start to Friday, with Leclerc and Sainz claiming P3 and P4 in Free Practice 1. However, the team appeared to slightly lack pace, showing a similar pattern to Barcelona where the Italian outfit was the fourth fastest squad behind Red Bull, McLaren and Mercedes.

The sprint qualifying saw Sainz claim fifth place, having been four tenths of a second slower than Max Verstappen. The Spaniard was not entirely delighted with his day, but he later voiced his optimism of moving forwards in the Sprint.

"Not the best afternoon. In terms of feeling, SQ1 and SQ2 was quite decent on the Medium compound. Then with the soft tyres in SQ3 I think we saw our weaknesses a bit and so we finished P5.

"However, we still have time to adjust a couple of things here and there for tomorrow and hopefully we can have a better qualifying for the Grand Prix.

"Regarding the Sprint Race, we'll try to score as many points as possible and I'm confident we can do a good job there," noted the Spaniard.

Charles Leclerc endured a disastrous end to his sprint qualifying session. The Monégasque failed to cross the start/finish line in time to put a lap on the board, leaving him down in 10th.

"That wasn’t the best start to the weekend. We struggled to match the pace of the quickest in the first two parts of Sprint Qualifying and then, when it was time for the one flying lap in SQ3, the engine’s anti-stall kicked in while I was in pit lane.

"This cost me precious seconds and meant I was unable to set a time. Obviously, I’m not happy but there’s still a long way to go this weekend. We will try and gain some places in tomorrow’s Sprint Race and then start over from zero as we prepare for qualifying for the Grand Prix.

Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur was left puzzled by the lack of pace on the soft tyres, but the Frenchman highlighted an area which his team quickly needs to review.

The Frenchman revealed that bouncing once again played a role in Ferrari's lack of pace with this issue having also hindered the Italian outfit in the high-speed corners of the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya a week ago.

“We are obviously disappointed to have one car in P5 and the other in P10. We need to look at our performance on the Soft tyre, since on the Medium it was ok and we were in the fight with Mercedes and McLaren.

“We also need to work on the bouncing the cars experienced in the final two quick corners because it’s costing us a bit of time.

For tomorrow in the Sprint, there is only one strategy and that is to push, because there is no mandatory pit stop for such a short race, so all we can do is push hard. We want to score good points with Carlos and bring home some more with Charles,” concluded the Frenchman.