Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz was left frustrated after qualifying seventh for the 2024 Qatar Grand Prix, two places and two tenths of a second behind team-mate Charles Leclerc. The duo will line up for the race fifth and seventh, split by the Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton, who had his own reasons to lament being in the back half of the top 10.
Although Leclerc topped Friday’s single free practice session, Ferrari was aware its car didn’t suit the characteristics of the Qatar track. The Scuderia has been slipping back relative to its nearest rivals ever since and, despite an encouraging points haul in Saturday’s sprint race, hit what Sainz described as a “hard limit” on lap time no matter what set-up levers it tried to pull on both cars.
“It just seems like our balance, our through-corner balance, our overall load in the car in these long combined fifth-sixth gear corners, it doesn't seem to be performing as well as it should,” he said.
“I think we've tried everything possible with a soft tyre to switch it on better: faster, slower out-lap, anything you can imagine – and we just simply seem to be finding a bit of a hard limit with the lap time that we could produce, in particularly with Charles, with the new floor, and also me with a bit of a more difficult session than yesterday. But I think it is what it is.”
The characteristics of the Losail track – a smooth, closed surface with predominantly fast, connected corners requiring the drivers to take a lot of kerb – combined with cooler temperatures at this time of year were expected not to favour the Ferrari. The absence of corner types requiring hard acceleration also makes it difficult to get the tyres on both axles into the right operating window at the right time.
Having complained about low grip levels in the sprint, where Sainz and Leclerc finished fourth and fifth, Ferrari made further set-up changes ahead of qualifying.
“We definitely tried quite a few things,” said Sainz. “Both on set-up and tyre preparation. It just didn't seem to change our fundamental issues. I think when you're talking about tyre preparation, you're talking about the last tenth.
“When you lack three or four tenths and you see all the medium-speed corners, you're just lacking minimum speeds and a bit of through-corner balance. And you realize that maybe just it's not quite in there, no?”
Although the Ferraris achieved what was probably their best possible result in the sprint race, Leclerc’s 1m20.8s lap in qualifying later on Saturday evening was further away from pole than Sainz had been from the front of the grid in the sprint, where he started fourth.
“So far, I think we've maximized everything [in terms of points from the weekend],” said Sainz. “I should have qualified P6 instead of P7.
“I went into the last lap of Q3 without a car in front, so no tow. I don't know why we were leading the pack, and that's normally a couple of tenths in the straights for free. We probably missed a bit on that.
“At the same time, the 20.8 of Charles is the 20.8 that the car can more or less achieve. So yeah, so far, I think we're maximising everything – but maximising everything might not be enough.”
McLaren’s 1-2 in the sprint race puts the team 30 points ahead of Ferrari in the constructors’ championship with just two grands prix to go.
“We just need to finish ahead of them and independently of the position. Of course, it's good for us if they don't win P1 and P2 – but even if they finish P3 and P4 and ahead of us, it's still gonna be almost Mission Impossible in Abu Dhabi.”
