Scuderia Ferrari sporting director Laurent Mekies opened up on Sebastian Vettel’s struggles with the SF1000. Mekies praised Sebastian Vettel for his “fighting spirit” and explained the German’s “hit a wall” comment after qualifying. However, the Frenchman revealed that Ferrari would contemplate an aggressive approach to compensate for the team’s less than stellar race pace.
For the second time in 5 races, Sebastian Vettel failed to make it past Q2 for a race. It’s unclear why the German’s struggling to such an extent when his teammate appears a lot more comfortable with the car.
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Can Sebastian Vettel redeem himself?
Following yesterday’s qualifying session, Vettel asserted that he gave it everything and was “out of answers” for his lack of pace. The German went on to add that Ferrari had tried different approaches to get a better result but to no avail.
Mekies believes Vettel’s struggles have to do with a lack of confidence with the car. The Frenchman added that Vettel was happy with the car’s balance but didn’t have a concrete answer to the staggering deficit in lap time.
“I think Sebastian is second to none when it comes to fighting spirit” said Mekies, as quoted by Autosport.
“And to try everything he can and be as constructive as one can be in trying to understand how to move the next limit,”
“I think what he expressed in saying we hit the wall is we have been trying so many different things in the last two weeks here with him which somehow made the car feel better, but didn’t seem to be any breakthrough in terms of lap time.
With teams wary of Pirelli’s tires giving up mid-race, Mekies hinted at Ferrari gambling on different strategies to make up for their disappointing pace.
“Starting from behind the pack in Silverstone is complicated. Because you get all the dirty air in high-speed corners and so on”
“So it’s something that will be a step back compared to last week”
“So we’ll try to play with this opportunity, with this risk-taking, to see if we gain some ground back”
“He’s a massive asset for the team and he’s not an asset that we can leave behind. And therefore we are together with him on that search for that missing batch of lap time that we are after” concluded Mekies.
Source: Autosport
