Saturday: Challenging Qualifications for Ferrari Drivers
Kimi Räikkönen is having trouble getting his Ferrari to work well this weekend in Canada, and this continued into qualifying, but he hopes to bounce back in the race. Fernando Alonso feels the same, even though he expects a difficult race.
Fernando Alonso (No. 14) – 4th and 7th
The Spaniard is happy with the progress of his Ferrari but hoped for a bit more, even if he expected Ferrari’s rivals to perform well on the Canadian track: « The qualifying results reflect the trend we have seen since the beginning of the season. As often happens, even if we’re ahead on Friday, we struggle a bit more on Saturday. The developments brought here in Canada worked well, the car has improved, and I’m thrilled about that, even if at the moment we are not able to extract the maximum from the car. Mercedes’ dominance today was not a surprise, and the Red Bulls and Williams also did better than us. »
Alonso expects a complicated race where being a strategic thinker will be crucial: “I think the race won’t be easy because it’s difficult to overtake at the start here, as there isn’t enough space in the first two corners. We will also need to manage tire degradation well and choose the number of stops wisely.”
Kimi Räikkönen (no. 7) – 6th and 10th
The Finn is experiencing a complicated weekend, and this was again the case in qualifying, but he hopes to make up for it in the race: « I haven’t been fully satisfied with the behavior of my car all weekend, and even in qualifying, I found it difficult. On my only run in Q3, I went out with a set of new super-softs, but my F14-T was sliding a lot, and I couldn’t put in a good lap. »
