F1 | Ferrari, Laurent Mekies: “We will try to take pole in the race”

Already in the first free practice session it seemed clear that Red Bull had something more on its home circuit. Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz, however, are not there. let yourself be discouraged, neither by the times on the track, nor by the Orange tide in the stands. The two pushed hard in qualifying, the Monegasque motivated by revenge after the events at Silverstone, the Spaniard excited, however, after the first victory of his career. However, the two Mercedes put a damper on the pole hopes of the two prancing horses. Hamilton hits the wall in Q3 with five minutes left on the clock. The session restarts, the two Ferraris are in the out-lap on new tyres, while Verstappen is still in the pits when Russell hits the wall, and once again the red flag is shown. The two Ferraris are thus forced to make their last attempt on already used tyre, crossing the finish line with a ridiculous margin from Verstappen's pole: twenty-nine thousandths for Leclerc, eighty-two for Sainz. There is still everything to fight for in the Sprint Race.

“We knew it would be a very tight qualifying with a head-to-head between us and our rivals. We worked hard after this morning's free practice to optimize our package and we were competitive to the point of being able to challenge for pole on the edge of a thousandths - confirmed Laurent Mekies, Ferrari sporting director – we didn't manage to take home first place but when the differences are so small it can happen, it's part of the game. We will try to conquer it in the race.

“This is, after all, a very long weekend, which essentially offers a 400 km race in two parts. We have seen that the potential is there and I would say that we have started off on the right foot - Mekies continued – now both we here on the track and our colleagues in Maranello are awaiting a very fascinating challenge: the gap with our rivals is minimal so what is needed to reverse today's result can be found in every detail. We will give our all to put our drivers in a position to extract even more performance from their F1-75s."