This weekend marks 71st Italian GP and 999th Grand Prix for the Italian team who is struggling for pace all season long so far. Friday Practice in Monza isn’t any different.Both drivers struggled on long runs with poor balance compared to Quali simulations.
Charles Leclerc finished first Practice session in P11 with a 1:21.904 lap on Mediums which is +1.201s down on lead Mercedes time and Sebastian Vettel finished morning session in P19 with a 1:22.988 lap,which is +2.285s down on P1 time.
In the Afternoon session both Ferrari’s improved,Charles Leclerc managed to crack top-10 with P9 and his lap time 1:21.503 was +1.311s down on Lewis Hamilton’s P1 time.Vettel finished the session in P12 just 0.230 sec down on his teammate.
Both Drivers are expecting tougher Qualifying and Race this weekend after tough Friday, Drivers trying to improve their Race pace with some setup change tomorrow.
Charles Leclerc
“It was a difficult day. On the one hand, we were positively surprised by our qualifying pace, on the other, we expected to do a bit better on the high fuel runs, so we need to find something to improve our race pace.
The car was very difficult to drive in race trim, where we struggled quite a bit with the balance and the overall degradation of the tyres.
Our target is to be as competitive as possible in both fuel conditions. I don’t think that we can expect much more for qualifying than what we’ve shown today, but I believe there’s still room for improvement on our race pace.”
Sebastian Vettel
“Today we used the time to work on the SF1000 in order to be in a better place tomorrow. The car was quite difficult to drive but it’s not the first time this year. As expected, we are losing out down the straight, but we also have to work on the balance to have a better performance in sector two.
Also, on heavy fuel the car is not easy to drive, partly because we have to run with set tyre pressures. I think there will be a big pack of cars fighting to the hundredths in quali and I can image it will be quite similar in the race. It will definitely be complicated.”
