Ferrari faced a challenging start to their Dutch Grand Prix weekend at Zandvoort, with both Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz experiencing setbacks during the opening day of practice.
The team's difficulties began with a wet/dry FP1 session that offered limited running time, followed by a more representative FP2 session where Leclerc only managed to place ninth on the timesheets, 0.741s off the pace set by Mercedes rival George Russell.
Reflecting on the day, the Monegasque admitted that the Scuderia’s current performance is not competitive enough to fight for an outright win on Sunday.
“Tough!” commented Leclerc. “As expected, I would say. We don’t quite have the pace of the guys in front, unfortunately.
“I think it’s better than what it looks like on the timesheet at the end of the day, but still not quite in the fight for the win, for sure.
“There’s quite a bit of work to do still. That’s what we are doing, but I hope it will pay off soon.”
Ferrari’s performance issues come as the team continues to grapple with mid-season developments that have reintroduced the problematic issue of bouncing on its SF-24 car.
This has necessitated several tests and interim solutions over recent races to address the aerodynamic instabilities.
©Ferrari
Looking ahead to the possibility of rain on Saturday and during qualifying, Leclerc saw a potential opportunity for Ferrari to close the gap.
“I really hope so. That’s the target,” he said. “I will try to do something special in quali, but we are speaking of gaps at the moment that are a bit too big to do something special.
“If we manage to get within two, three-tenths, maybe there is something to be done. If not, I predict a difficult weekend for us.”
Carlos Sainz’s day was even more problematic. The Spaniard completed only a few laps during the dry FP2 session before a gearbox issue cut his practice short.
“Basically no track running today,” he lamented. “Only three laps in FP1 because of the weather, for everyone, but then in FP2, [when] everyone was looking to obviously catch up on what we lost in FP1, we had a gearbox issue.”
©Ferrari
As a result of the limited running, Sainz compared the upcoming sessions to a condensed weekend format.
“We go into Saturday almost like a bit of a Sprint weekend, because we will only have one practice session to get up to speed and have a good weekend,” he said.
“I’m going to have to hit the ground running tomorrow in FP3, make sure that I’m immediately on the pace, and hopefully we can have still a good performance.”
With only one practice session remaining before qualifying, both Leclerc and Sainz face a tough challenge to turn around Ferrari’s fortunes at Zandvoort.
The team will need to optimize their setup quickly to ensure they can compete more effectively as the weekend progresses.
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