Ferrari had a eventful Friday at the Portuguese Grand Prix at the wonderful Autòdromo Internacional do Algarve just outside Portimão. Ferrari duo Charles Leclerc and Sebastian Vettel finished second practice session in P4 & P6.
In the first practice session, both Scuderia drivers covered a total of 70 laps, Charles completed 33 laps and come home in P4 with the best time of 1:19.309 seconds, while Sebastian completed 37 laps, the quickest time of 1:20.200, which put him P11 on the time sheet.
In the second practice session, Ferrari and all the other teams spent the first half hour running prototype 2021 tyres on all cars as requested by Pirelli. The session was red flagged twice, firstly because of a problem on Pierre Gasly’s AlphaTauri and then again after a collision between Max Verstappen in the Red Bull and Lance Stroll in the Racing Point. Charles and Seb were fourth and sixth fastest respectively (with 34 laps each).
Sebastian Vettel (FP1-P11 & FP2-P6):
“Today the track was a big but very interesting challenge for everybody. At the beginning it was very slippery, mostly because of the resurfacing, but it is very smooth. It was my very first day and I liked it. It’s good that we have plenty of tracks that are exciting. I think tomorrow will be better as the track itself will improve and we will know it better.
It’s a bit difficult to say how competitive we were in the afternoon session, because not all the drivers tried a qualifying lap. Today, what everybody needed was more running to get into a rhythm. The car felt a bit nervous, partly due to the elevation changes, but I suppose that is the same for everyone. We will see the true picture tomorrow.”
Charles Leclerc (FP1-P4 & FP2-P4):
“This track is amazing! It took quite a few laps to find the flow, because you don’t really see any apexes but once you get into the rhythm, it’s really good. The circuit is also extremely slippery and the rear of the car is moving everywhere but I think that makes it even better in terms of fun! The grip level didn’t improve much throughout the sessions, which should make for an exciting race.
Today looked quite good for us and, mainly on the qualifying side, it was fairly promising. Let’s wait and see though, as we haven’t had much high-fuel running with normal tyres, as we did some with the prototype-tyres instead. Running with high fuel was actually our weakness at the last race, so it’ll be a bit of a surprise on Sunday and we’ll see where we are.”
