Ferrari mimic Aston Martin’s approach in Qatar practice session

Following an encouraging qualifying session at the Lusail International Circuit, it has emerged that Ferrari scrubbed in medium tyre for the remainder of the Qatar F1 race weekend.

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.

Reflecting on his opening day in Lusail, Leclerc has revealed that he was left frustrated after sprint qualifying as he had expected more from his car based on the sole one-hour practice session.

“Our FP1 performance was better than expected, so our hopes were that we could finish SQ in good positions, given that this weekend is such an important one for us.

“Unfortunately, we didn’t and P4 and 5 is all that was possible today. Let’s see what tomorrow brings. For now we are not in the best positions, but things can play out differently come the Sprint race.”

His team-mate Sainz looked a bit off the pace in practice compared to Leclerc, but he bounced back in qualifying to outshine the Monegasque. However, the Spaniard has revealed that his SF24’s balance was far from ideal in the all-important third segment of sprint qualifying.

“A rather unusual qualifying session. In terms of balance, we worked in the right direction and the car improved from free practice. However, in SQ3 I had quite a lot of understeer which obviously didn’t help to put together a better lap.

“Anyway, starting on the second row can still allow us to bring home a good result and hopefully, to try and attack one of the McLarens ahead, score points and collect data which will help us prepare for Sunday.”

As for the tyres, the majority of drivers concentrated on the medium and the soft rubber in the sole one-hour free practice session. The exceptions were the Ferrari and Williams drivers, who opted to use one of their two available sets of hards in FP1.

Leclerc and Sainz used the white-walled tyres for their opening stint to complete a series of short runs and a longer race simulation before performing a qualifying simulation on the red-walled tyres.

Drivers are required to hand back two sets of slick tyres after the opening practice, but interestingly, Ferrari drivers used two further sets which they kept for the remainder of the race. Although the Scuderia usually does not scrub in tyres in practice sessions, Sainz and Leclerc did exactly that with two sets of mediums – a practice usually executed by Aston Martin.

As performance degradation has been very limited so far this weekend, and even the soft tyres having enabled multiple push laps, Ferrari might have given up the peak grip in order to achieve better initial grip at the beginning of their medium-tyre stints.