Fred Vasseur has insisted he is taking the positives after Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton qualified second and third in Austria, with Mercedes\u2019 George Russell pipping them to pole despite having to lift for a yellow flag.<\/p>\n
Saturday\u2019s Qualifying session at the Red Bull Ring came to a close in dramatic circumstances with Leclerc<\/a> and Hamilton\u2019s<\/a> final efforts putting the Scuderia drivers in a prime position \u2013 sitting first and second with only a few challengers to come.<\/p>\n However, Red Bull\u2019s Max Verstappen crashed out<\/a> at the penultimate corner as he sought to challenge, with the incident bringing out a yellow flag for those behind to navigate. One of those drivers was Russell, who lifted off but still managed to post a time that usurped the two Ferrari drivers.<\/p>\n As a result, they were left to settle for P2 and P3 on the grid as they were sandwiched between the two Mercedes of Russell<\/a> and Kimi Antonelli<\/a>, with the current championship leader qualifying in fourth.<\/p>\n Speaking to F1 TV after the conclusion of the eventful Saturday session, Ferrari\u2019s Team Principal was asked if he was disappointed with how it had all played out at the end with the yellow flag.<\/p>\n \u201cNo,\u201d Vasseur said. \u201cFirst I\u2019m taking the positive that we are second and third, that we are in the fight with Mercedes in the Quali and able probably to have good pace for tomorrow.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is most important. We still have 15 races to go and the most important [thing] is the performance.<\/p>\n \u201cOn the incident [with the yellows] you can discuss at length whether it was reasonable to not have double yellow in these circumstances when you deploy the Medical Car. Then we don\u2019t have the data of the mini sector, we can\u2019t check if you reduce the speed by five per cent or not, but we have to trust Race Control and I will do it.\u201d<\/p>\n Another positive for Ferrari was the performance of Leclerc, who bounced back after two disappointing weekends \u2013 he crashed out in Monaco and Barcelona Qualifying before mechanical issues forced him to retire from the respective Grands Prix as well.<\/p>\n However, Vasseur was adamant that Leclerc\u2019s pace \u201cwas always there\u201d and there were no doubts he could return to form.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was more you journalists who were a bit worried,\u201d Vasseur explained. \u201cI was not, honestly.<\/p>\n \u201cOn his last lap in Monaco he was fighting for pole, he was two tenths in advance compared to Max. When he crashed in Barcelona he was also on a very good lap \u2013 the pace was always there.<\/p>\n \u201cNow he was a bit under pressure when you start to do mistakes, and it\u2019s good for him to come back, to do a good lap and to put everything together but the pace was always there.\u201d<\/p>\n With Hamilton sealing a spectacular first win for Ferrari last time out in Barcelona \u2013 and with the Scuderia\u2019s impressive tyre management and three-stop strategy proving key \u2013 Vasseur also gave his take over what was possible in Sunday\u2019s Austrian Grand Prix as Mercedes appeared to be a step ahead of the Scuderia.<\/p>\n \u201cEven when they slow down they are faster than us!\u201d Vasseur joked. \u201cBut each day it\u2019s another story \u2013 it\u2019s not because we had good tyre management two weeks ago that it will work tomorrow.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have to put ourselves in clean air, to pay attention to our car and our tyres and not to be focused on the fight or something else. It\u2019s what we did [in the] last race and let\u2019s try to do the same tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fred Vasseur has insisted he is taking the positives after Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton qualified second and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":765280,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-765279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=765279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765279\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/765280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=765279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=765279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=765279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}