Frederic Vasseur expands on the games that F1 drivers play especially in qualifying amid narrow window of tyre performance, as Carlos Sainz noted.
On Saturday of F1 Singapore GP, Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc blamed tyre blankets for lack of tyre temperature for his Q3 run where he had to push to increase the temperature. In doing so, he had a moment where his lap was deleted, while Sainz eventually crashed out on the out lap.
Post-race, Leclerc took the blame on himself, as team boss Vasseur explained what happened with Ferrari in qualifying. He ruled out the tyre blanket story and noted the games played by rivals in qualifying which eventually caused the tyre temperature problem.
“I think the story had nothing to do with the blankets, the story is that when we exit from the pit that we were all playing a kind of a game, because nobody wanted to be first,” explained Vasseur to media. “Nobody wanted to be last. We did a fake to release the car from the pit lane, and everybody was trying to copy the others.
“And then we stopped a little bit at the pit exit. And we recovered a large part of this, but it’s true that we arrived at Turn 2 slightly lower on tyre temp, but marginally. And again, we have one lap, you are chasing the last kph in Turn 1, because at the end of the day, when you are one hundredth behind the guy in front of you, that you have some regrets if you didn’t push. It is like it is.
“We have to take this, I discussed with Charles, and it’s part of the game.” Sainz, meanwhile, highlighted the theory as well, but agreed that the tyre performance window is very narrow for Ferrari this year. And this is something he is particularly working on for the rest of the six F1 races, so that they can extract as much in qualifying to be better placed in races.
“I think what keeps being a bit of a trend this year is that we have a very narrow window for the tyres to perform in our car this year,” said Sainz to media. “I think last year our car switched on the tyres whenever we wanted. This year seems to be a very fine line between getting them in the right window or not. So, yeah, we’re trying to figure that out from my side.
“I’m going to focus during these next few weeks to see what I can do for the last six races to make that less of a limitation or less of a weakness and put ourselves further up, because then the race pace is always strong. So some homework to do on that side. As uch, it is just a theory. Obviously, we have theories right now, but I think unless you do the ideal perfect out-lap, the chance of not having the tyres in the right window is extremely tough for us.
“And as soon as there’s something happens out of our control, like having to let through traffic, having to go slow in sector two, having to queue a lot at the end of the pit lane, you’re a few degrees out of the operating window, and there’s zero grip, which is what caught me out and probably what caught Charles out into Turn 1.
“And doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t do the mistakes that I did yesterday, but at the same time, it shows that we need to put special attention into that. Hopefully with that, once we put special attention into it, we can qualify a bit further up, and with our race pace, we can fight,” summed up Sainz.
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