Ferrari needs to continue improving its car as qualifying develops after making good progress in recent races, according to Jock Clear.
Sebastian Vettel was outspoken following the Monaco Grand Prix when Ferrari looked capable of challenging at the front but failed to improve significantly compared to its rivals in Q3. Head of race activities Clear says Canada and Baku showed improvements during qualifying and wants Ferrari to continue that form in Austria this weekend.
“The circuit itself has been resurfaced this year, yet we don’t know what this surface is going to give us," Clear said. "We don’t know the impact on the tyres, but that’s the same for all the teams. So we have to do our homework but we have to have some things in the box to deal with perhaps what will be a different situation from last year.
"Perhaps the tyres will behave differently, perhaps the warm-up will be more difficult, perhaps the tyres will have a shorter life, perhaps they’ll have a longer life. All these questions we can’t answer until we get there and we do our practice running on Friday.
"Then we have to react and that’s what we’re all about, finding all the little bits of lap time that make the difference between Friday and Saturday and then going in to qualifying we need to give the guys a strong car.
"We’ve made improvements in the recent races in our qualifying and we’ve made good progression through Q1, Q2 and Q3. We need to carry that into Austria and we need to give Seb and Kimi [Raikkonen] every opportunity to be fighting right at the front in Q3.”
And Clear says Austria provides a very different challenge for the teams because there are few areas where you can work to improve the car which will provide significant lap time.
“It’s another challenging track, very different from Baku where we’ve just come from, but also very different from Canada and Monaco. As always, we try to approach these Grand Prix races with new parts, new updates, new setups, specifically designed with the difficulties of each track. Austria is a very simple track with only five real corners and some good straights. So, it is a balance of power circuit with the downforce circuit.
“In terms of technical challenge it’s one of the shortest tracks, so that all the very small details make a slightly more significant impact on your lap time. You’re looking for every little hundredth on a lap that is a little over one minute - I think 1m07s or 1m08s is what we expect to be doing in qualifying. As such, those little details need to be found in only five corners.
"That's the challenge for the engineers. We come from a circuit in Baku which has 19 corners and therefore finding a bit of time in 19 corners all adds up. Finding time in only five corners is a bit more of a challenge but it's a challenge we enjoy."
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