Ferrari’s surprise pole position for the Singapore Grand Prix showed they must never be discounted, says Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff.
The slow Singapore track was widely expected to be a bogey track for the SF-90s, which struggled on the similarly tight Hungaroring three races ago. However Charles Leclerc took pole position and Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton only denied Ferrari a front row lock-out by two hundredths of a second.The surprise result shows “you always need to have Ferrari on the radar”, said Wolff. He believes their rivals have rediscovered the potential they demonstrated earlier in the year.
“They’ve had some pretty good races at the beginning of the season, and then somehow fell apart, and a strong run most recently,” he said.
“When we came into this weekend I heard so many times ‘well you’re the favourite and it’s going to between you and Red Bull and Ferrari’s going to be nowhere because their cars just go fast on the straight’. And I always tried to be cautious about these things.
“And here we go: It may be an extravagant track and a little bit of an outlier and maybe they were lucky but I don’t think so. I think it’s [that] Ferrari is a force to be reckoned with always.”
Ferrari have previously been especially strong on straights but Wolff said their package looked strong in every respect in qualifying.
“When you look at Charles’s lap it was messy,” said Wolff, pointing out – as Leclerc also admitted – the Ferrari driver had at least two “big moments” on his way two pole position.
Wolff said that shows “it’s just overall that the package is powerful.”
“We’ve got to take ourselves by the nose and say ‘did we do everything right?’ and the answer is ‘not completely’,” he added.
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F1oSaurus (@)
22nd September 2019, 10:32
It looks more like Ferrari have a car that’s fast enough, but the drivers are unable to extract the maximum out of it because they don’t know hoe to set it up properly. Or rather, didn’t know. Plus some small updates to improve the aero or perhaps ease of setting it up.
So that’s why they ended up with this seemingly random performance level. One race they are miles ahead (Bahrain) and the another they are miles behind (Hungary).
Then “pundits” claim the Ferrari only works well on fast low aero tracks. Thing is, poor setup or issues like that are masked by them pulling half a second ahead on a straight yes but hat doesn’t mean the car is only suited for that. In fact they did fine on Monaco.
OOliver
22nd September 2019, 11:18
Yes I think the car had always been very fast but lacked that balance such that the drivers couldn’t predict its handling.
I think now they have found a way to make the car more predictable hence they can exploit the cars full potential more frequently.
As Wolff noted, Leclerc made several errors, but he was still faster which shows the underlying speed the car has.
Joseph (@bigjoe)
22nd September 2019, 12:36
You mean like both Ferrari drivers losing it in qualifying. Merc is still the better slow speed car. Why are we even having this discussion when the race in half an hour’s time could prove different.
Leclerc is a revelation, let’s not take anything away from him. Nobody did that to Hamilton when he was finishing second all those times in the first part of 2007
koddamn (@gufdamm)
22nd September 2019, 15:18
LOL. I thought he wasn’t gonna mention Lewis for a second there. He never disappoints.
Jeorge
22nd September 2019, 13:22
I don’t think so, Ferrari usually design their car to be as comfortable for the driver as possible while Merc is the fastest possible car and let the driver adapt to it
In their onboards the steering is less shaky and smoother compared to Merc, maybe that proves you right I have no idea
Just my 0.02
Sensord4notbeingafanboi (@peartree)
22nd September 2019, 15:21
nothing to do with a massive upgrade package none of that. miracle worker wolff surely only speaks the truth.
Mayrton
22nd September 2019, 11:43
I hope its all legit, but just dont trust this whole FIA – Todt family – Leclerc axes
Adam (@rocketpanda)
22nd September 2019, 12:20
Utterly confused how they had so much pace here, considering we’ve seen them perform terribly on circuits similar.
Joseph (@bigjoe)
22nd September 2019, 12:37
@rocketpanda
Hamilton would have been on pole if Kimi had stayed.
koddamn (@gufdamm)
22nd September 2019, 15:19
Leclerc made mistakes and still won pole. It’s the car.