Ferrari team principal Maurizio Arrivabene says qualifying difficulties are the main reason it is struggling to challenge Mercedes more strongly.
Red Bull beat Ferrari at the Spanish Grand Prix and duly emerged as the biggest rival to Mercedes in Monaco as Daniel Ricciardo took pole position and finished second to Lewis Hamilton after a pit stop error. With Sebastian Vettel starting and finishing fourth, Arrivabene says the qualifying results are preventing Ferrari from maximising its potential.
“The only podium that we were missing is [Monaco]," Arrivabene said. "At the beginning of the season I won’t tell you the story again, you know what’s happened, but I don’t want to find any excuses. We were not good enough in Barcelona - only in Q3 - and the same also here and then we paid the fee during the race.
“I take the lessons and we need to really understand what the problem is because if you recall in Q1 not only in Barcelona because it’s another story but here in Q1 we did a 1:14.1 [sic] and we are slower in Q3. So that is the problem that we have to look for.”
Arrivabene is slightly out with his example as Vettel did a 1:14.610 in Q1 - setting the pace - but only improved by 0.058s in Q3 while pole-sitter Ricciardo's improvement was 1.3s.
With Vettel pitting early for intermediate tyres and getting stuck behind Felipe Massa, Arrivabene defended Ferrari's strategy, saying it needed to be aggressive to try and make progress.
“The strategy was correct. Like it or not it was right. When you are running in that position you have to be on an aggressive strategy and then we had Massa in front of us and this could happen when you are on an aggressive strategy. Without that we are in a different position talking about something else. Having said so, I don’t want to find any excuses but it could happen when you try an aggressive strategy.”
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