Fredric Vasseur: “Not Good for Charles [Leclerc], but Good for Carlos [Sainz]”

It was a lackluster result for Ferrari at the Japanese GP Qualifying. Carlos Sainz, nursing a throttle issue, secured P4, with the McLaren of Lando Norris outqualifying him by 2-tenths of a second. And Charles Leclerc‘s performance was very uncharacteristic to his Qualifying prowess. He rounded up the back of the Q1 contenders, with a dismal P8. Ferrari Team Principal Frederic Vasseur wasn’t quite satisfied with the overall results, that he voiced in the press conferences.

Per Carlos Sainz, Ferrari was aware of its lack of pace around Suzuka immediately after FP1. With the FP2 rain pouring their hopes of more data collection away, they were in a fix. Even FP3 wasn’t kind to them and all of this reflected in the Qualifying results. But surprisingly, there was a considerable gap between their drivers separated by 4 positions.

Addressing the same, Vasseur said, “The overall result is not good for Charles, but good for Carlos. Let’s be focused on tomorrow, the race pace looks good. We need to have a good first lap, and then there is one DRS zone. After lap 1, we need to have a good position. You know with this car you need to be able to run in clean air.”

He also elaborated on how Leclerc’s position is not a lost cause for the race tomorrow. “You know that Charles was P2 last week, and 18 other drivers wanted to be P2, and today, he is 1 tenth off Carlos, so I am not worried about the situation. We expected this performance from McLaren because they were strong around this circuit last year.

The French team boss doesn’t appear too worried with the Qualifying results. It could be because Ferrari’s SF24 is known to have a better race pace. Yet, his star driver Leclerc remains unhappy with his performance.

Charles Leclerc expresses his frustration after Qualifying

The Monegasque driver was having a tough time FP1 onwards, compared to his teammate. But the woes amplified in Qualifying and he blamed his car for not getting the tires in the window he expected.

“So nothing off, no mistakes, just slow, and I’m not happy with this of course,” Leclerc said post-qualifying. “We’ll have to look into it and try and understand what was going wrong with the tires and why the grip available wasn’t as high as what I expected.”

With their star driver unhappy, Ferrari can only go so far in the race to help him fight Mercedes and McLaren for a higher points finish.

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