Vasseur hints at significant setup changes after sprint race

Having only ended up fourth and fifth on the grid for today’s Qatar F1 Sprint, Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur has revealed that the Italian team is intent on making tweaks to the setup of its SF24.

Ferrari had been expected to struggle for pace at the Lusail International Circuit as the long-radius medium- and high-speed corners usually expose Ferrari’s SF24’s weakness, with the car unable to generate sufficient downforce level in this particular type of corners.

Despite the expectations, Charles Leclerc topped the only practice session, with his team mate Carlos Sainz ending up in an encouaring fourth spot.

However, the Scuderia was unable to carry that form over into the sprint qualifying session, with both drivers having seemingly struggled from understeer into the entry of the medium-speed corners of the second sector. When the soft tyres were bolted on in SQ3, Leclerc and Sainz managed to get within three tenths of a second from Lando Norris’ pole time, but it was still only enough for P4 and P5 on the grid.

Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur has revealed that the Italian outfit is planning to make several tweaks to the setup of the SF24 in a bid to cure the understeery nature for the rest of the weekend.

“We had a much better car in FP this afternoon, but we had too much understeer in SQ3 which meant we struggled a lot. If we want to look on the positive side, we can say that the big points are only given out on Sunday so we have to react and be ready for tomorrow evening’s qualifying and make sure we have a good car for Sunday.”

The Frenchman continued: “Now the cars are in parc fermé until after the Sprint Race, but following that we will be able to make changes for the main Qualifying session. “

“Pace-wise it’s quite difficult to have a real picture, as no one did a really long stint in practice so we cannot be sure what level of graining we will have. The Sprint race will be a bit earlier in the day so the track temperature will be higher and there should be less graining,” concluded Vasseur.