Scuderia Ferrari have work to do should they wish to claim a podium on Sunday at the Mexico City Grand Prix, after Carlos Sainz Jr qualified fifth and Charles Leclerc seventh.
Both Sainz and Leclerc appeared to struggle with the driveability of the F1-75, with replays having shown the duo sliding and drifting over the kerbs around the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez. The F1-75 really does appear to be a handful, something that could be an issue on Sunday in regard to tyre degradation.
Both Oracle Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team look considerably stronger than the Italians, despite Sainz having actually topped Free Practice One on Friday.
Ferrari’s Racing Director, Laurent Mekies, admitted that the car is “struggling more than usual” in Mexico City, but that the team will “bring home plenty of points”.
“It was a tight qualifying today. This season, we’ve got used to being higher up the grid, but today we had to settle for 5th and 7th. It’s probably fair to say that we were not totally satisfied with the behaviour of our cars on this track, and that there are perhaps a few things we still need to crack around here to be more competitive.
“That being said, we think the potential is there. The gaps were relatively small and at some stage in Q2 it felt like we could be in the fight for better positions, but as it turned out we will start behind our competitors tomorrow. It’s a long and tough race here, we have seen many cars struggling more than usual with a lot of sliding and it could be a race full of surprises with hopefully some opportunities for us to bring home plenty of points.
“We focus tonight on trying to understand how to extract a bit more from the package we have here, and we will try our best to be in the fight tomorrow.