"So far so good," claims Fred Vasseur after tight sprint qualifying in Austin
Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur hopes that the Italian team will be able to make use of its speed on Pirelli's medium and hard compound after the sprint qualifying that saw Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz end up only third and fifth on the grid.
Ferrari did not bring any upgrades to its SF-24 to Austin, but the Scuderia looked mighty quick across the sole practice session on Friday. The Italian team managed to carry this form over into the short sprint qualifying session, with Leclerc going fastest in SQ1 and Sainz setting the benchmark in SQ2.
However, with the rule restricting drivers to the soft tyres in the final part of sprint qualifying, the top ten bolted on the red-walled tyres for the all-important qualifying segment. Leclerc and Sainz were only separated by thousands of a second, but neither of them were able to challenge Max Verstappen and George Russell for the pole position.
Reflecting on the sprint qualifying, Sainz and Leclerc rued the balance of their SF-24 on the soft tyres after neither of them were able to challenge for the pole position in the Austin F1 Sprint.
Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur was left buoyed by the SF-24's pace on the hard and medium compound, clamining that it might turn out to be an advantage in Saturday's Sprint and in Sunday's race.
"So far so good I would say, even if it was not the result we expected after we were heading the field this morning on the Hard and the car was also okay on the Soft. SQ1 and SQ2 went very well and then in SQ3 we lost a bit with the Soft, but overall the pace is there and it shows continuity from Monza, Baku and Singapore.
"As usual, it’s very tight and we saw Mercedes and Verstappen much better on the Soft than the Medium, while it was the opposite for us, which bodes well for our race pace on Saturday and Sunday as we won’t have to use the Soft in the race.
"Tomorrow, starting from P3 and looking at our pace on the Medium we have the pace to fight for the win," the Frenchman concluded.
