Ferrari drivers still lacking pace and lagging behind

The atmosphere is not great on the Ferrari side after facing another setback against Red Bull. Kimi Räikkönen, who finished fifth, completed his lap in Q3 four-tenths of a second slower than the slowest Red Bull, in this case, Max Verstappen who was fourth on the timesheet. Worse still, this performance was achieved fair and square: the Reds have never been able to challenge their opponents since the start of the Texan weekend.

Faced with this observation, the Finn shows pragmatism to explain the difficulties of the Reds in Austin: “I think we can improve a little bit; even to be honest about the overall performance, the feeling in the car hasn’t been bad throughout the day. We are just not fast enough on a lap,” he concluded. The 2007 world champion also laments a lack of grip and pure speed, which is fatal to ambitions in Qualifying.

Beaten by his teammate, Sebastian Vettel shares the same impression of a drop in performance during an encouraging Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka. As a reminder, the Prancing Horse had seized the second row, “Iceman” ahead of “Seb”: “We are not happy with the competitiveness we showed today (Saturday). Yet, I think the circuit is similar in many ways to Japan two weeks ago; but we are struggling much more here!”

Sixth on the starting grid, the four-time world champion shares Räikkönen’s opinion on the team’s room for improvement. The feeling onboard the car is not so bad, but once again, the lack of pace is glaring. The matchup between the best Red Bull and the best Ferrari in Qualifications also turns in favor of the Austrian over the Italian: 11-8 precisely over the course of this season.

Regarding the tire strategy, Vettel admits that the choice to opt for super-soft tires in the second part of qualifying quickly became evident. It was obviously necessary to avoid the risk of being excluded from the “super pole.” But could the German have still attempted the same gamble as Max Verstappen in Q2?

It’s an option that was considered, but I don’t think we had the pace to do that ».

Excluded from the podium in Suzuka due to a faulty race strategy, Ferrari could take advantage of advanced tire degradation for its opponents tomorrow in Austin, where temperatures are expected to be close to 30°C. Even though this season, the Italian manufacturer has rarely been able to benefit from the relatively gentle treatment of the SF16-H on the tires. How distant the 2015 single-seater, partly influenced by James Allison, seems…