Friday and Saturday of the F1 Las Vegas Grand Prix went better than the first day, with Ferrari having the upper hand in qualifying, but there were also a number of casualties.
The F1 GP held in Las Vegas went well on Friday and Saturday, with Ferrari taking a one-two victory and Charles Leclerc taking pole position ahead of teammate Carlos Sainz, who started from 12th due to grid constraints. Obtained. penalty. This put Red Bull’s Max Verstappen on the front row.
Normally, the Ferrari duo are not too confident in challenging Red Bull, but Leclerc feels he has good pace this weekend and could face Verstappen. The Dutch believe that relations with the Monegasques could be interesting.
For Sainz, he was still disappointed with the situation, but he controlled himself and is waiting for resistance from outside the top ten. Verstappen’s teammate Sergio Perez was a little disappointed with Red Bull when things caught up with him in Q2.
The Mexican was not the only one to drop out in the second round; Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton also lost out due to a lack of pace in the final stages. After changing his setup to get into a better position for the race, he hopes to perform better in the race.
The situation was not good for McLaren as they were unable to advance to Q1 due to a strategic mistake. They felt their tires would last as long as they did in practice, but they didn’t and ended up losing out in a disastrous qualifying session for them.
Leclerc: “To be honest, I was confident from the first lap of FP1. So the car was great. But we are always very strong when it comes to quality But of course we also know where the weaknesses are in the race, and that will become clearer tomorrow. But overall the car feels great so far. I sincerely hope that I can have a good race. I’m not happy with Q3, but I can only be happy if I get pole position. So I think the second quarter was probably the best lap I’ve had in a while. Both were really, really good. Then everything went wrong in the third quarter and we always lost a tenth here and there. However, in the end we were able to record almost the same lap time as in the second quarter, but I think there was a significant improvement on the track. So I should have driven sooner. The feel of the car was also great. But yes, you’re right. Road courses are always difficult, but qualifying this time was fun. I mean, everything is going so well and the car feels really good again, so why can’t I have fun? So it was a good session for us.
It’s the best starting position because you’re the first one, so you have a lot of trust. On the other hand, we know that Red Bull are very strong and Max will obviously be very strong in terms of race pace. However, I feel like this weekend had more of a silver lining than other races because of the high fuel consumption. So, I hope I can turn this pole position into a victory. In Singapore, depending on the location, your pace may drop by 1.5 to 2 seconds, and the car behind you may not be able to overtake. Things are very different here and pace will play a more important role in the race. So we have to do a good job, but to be honest, so far we’re looking pretty good. Stronger than other varieties. That doesn’t mean we’re better in race speed compared to Max, but I think we’re closer than other races. So if there’s one race I can win since Singapore, it’s this one and of course I’m going to give it my all. ”
Sainz: “I would say Charles was probably a step ahead in terms of confidence this weekend. But when we got to the third quarter, I took a good step forward. I felt like as a team, we probably couldn’t reach the maximum lap time that the car could do today. If you add up all my curves, the car definitely has a 32.5 or something like that. I think… 33 or 32? 32 is too many. Thirty-three. What lap times did you set? Very similar. But yeah, look, we’re not complaining. 1st and 2nd place in qualifying. We flew all weekend and dominated every session. Yes, it would be great if we could fight for the win tomorrow, but unfortunately we are starting 12th. Everyone was hoping that overtaking might be a little easier. I think the course itself was very difficult. I chase people because of the wall, I lose confidence when braking when there is a car in front of me, and I can’t even see the brake marks. And it becomes a little harder to follow the cursor. Well, I think we can definitely move forward tomorrow. How far or how fast will it go? I don’t know. Let’s also look at the strategy, the tire grain is pretty bad. Let’s see how this affects the race and whether we have a chance to come out on top tomorrow. ”
Verstappen: “I think all weekend we didn’t do enough in one lap, so it wasn’t really a surprise.” We did our best in qualifying as well. I think so. I also removed the rear wing, so it may have taken some time to get into a rhythm. But yeah, we were too late. I was actually pretty happy with my lap in Q3. It was a huge improvement from Q2, but to be honest, we just didn’t have anything left. In other words, I don’t think there were any corners where we lost time on the Q2 lap. We improved a little bit in almost every corner, but yes, it felt good. Not quite enough, but I felt it was ok. Tomorrow, of course, will be very different. The important thing is not the performance of one lap, but the longevity of the tires. There’s a lot of grinding on the tires, so of course I hope I can get a little bit of an advantage there or at least have a chance to fight the tires. I think he looks a little like Austin in his first race. The inside was really bad there too. So it’s not ideal. So I was actually hoping to finish fourth. Because if I did that, I could move up to third place. But that’s how it works. I mean, we’ll take care of it. Fortunately, its run isn’t too bad. But if you get off to a bad start, you can still lose a lot of positions. So I’ll work on that tomorrow. ”
Perez: “We worked out a strategy with the team before qualifying, and obviously we don’t know this place, and we know what the best program is. I thought about it and went down that road. Of course, after that it was easy to see that it was a wrong call. I was a bit lucky to qualify first because I couldn’t get back to the pits on the last lap. And , when Q2 ended the session a little early, it meant there was still development on the way and we were in the pits. I didn’t think it would end this quickly. However, it seems that he was unable to reach the final 10th place today. We lacked a bit of pace there. Like I said, this is a new place for us, so we didn’t have high expectations, but they are. I think the degree could potentially be very high. There’s a lot to see tomorrow, so let’s see what happens. We should be able to achieve a race speed that is much higher than our qualifying speed, so we hope to make further progress tomorrow. ”
NORRIS: “It wasn’t good because I passed out. But to be honest, the pace of the car was right for us. We were there all weekend. We were way off the pace and to be honest that’s where we should be. It’s been a tough weekend and the car’s performance hasn’t been as good as it has been the last few weeks. I’m disappointed because it was obvious, but at the same time I knew I wouldn’t be able to go very fast in the first few laps. In a way, I can’t say it’s a great thing, but it was good that it kept us… I would say it’s kind of a bit of a reality check. Better this year than next year, if that makes sense. Not what we wanted, but pretty much what we expected.
“I saw everyone pick up the pace quite a bit. I think we talked about we have strengths and weaknesses and we know where we excel and we know where we’re going. For example. , we saw Mercedes have so many problems in Brazil and Ferrari have even more problems in Brazil, and then all of a sudden they look like the fastest cars [here]. So, who knows? It’s time for us to get down a little bit, to realize that we still have weaknesses and some big problems, just little ups and downs, and days like today are like that. I think. It hurts inside, but sometimes it’s good.”
Hamilton: “It’s pretty bad, but that’s the way it is. It’s impressive to see Williams so high up. There just wasn’t any grip there. I think the tires didn’t perform throughout the session. Not ideal, but this is a problem I’ve had for a long time. As is the case with a lot of people, we started the weekend with a lot of degradation and a lot of grain, so it’s going to be really interesting to see…I made some changes to the car. I added this, so hopefully it will be useful in good races. It’s going to be very difficult. It’s not the best place to go as it’s a short walk to the first corner and right in the middle of the action. Since we are all flying low, there will be a lot of degradation. There may be more degrees than we know, but no one has driven on hard tires yet. But Max (Verstappen) has two hard (tire sets) and two medium tires, and we have one medium tire and two hard tires. So it’s going to be a long race. I think we will manage the deterioration. ”
Due to issues with other brands, brands such as Williams, Haas, and Alfa Romeo were able to join Alpine in the top ten. In fact, Williams were the only team other than Ferrari to field both cars in the third quarter, as the British team achieved the best result in qualifying.
Alexander Albon didn’t feel 100% with the car, but he still managed to take advantage of it and Logan Sargent secured the best result. At Alpine, Esteban Ocon was eliminated in the first quarter, but Pierre Gasly arrived in the third.
Gathly’s performance was great. Alpha He was similar at Romeo, with Chou Guanyu sent off in the first quarter and Valtteri Bottas scoring in the third. Kevin Magnussen finished in the top 10 for Haas, but Nico Hulkenberg was eliminated in the second quarter.
Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso was surprised by his top 10 result and was hoping to score points in the race, but AlphaTauri were unable to run the car in conditions that had not been seen since practice, and on a good day There was no.
Alonso: “I’m very happy to have made it to Q3. Tomorrow we’ll see what we can achieve from ninth place. I’m happy with the two laps in Q3. We finished about half a second behind seventh place, so it was all very close.When we came here, we thought this track might not really suit our package, especially since it has such high straight-line speeds. I was thinking. The venue here is impressive and they’ve done a good job here. I think the only problem for us was the asphalt that didn’t have much grip, so we’ll keep that in mind for future work. It may happen. But so far, racing in Las Vegas has been fun. ”
Gathly: “I am very happy with the team’s performance today, especially since our expectations were much lower than what we achieved. I hope I can do the same thing tomorrow after starting fourth due to Carlos (Sainz)’s penalty.The car felt really good and I felt comfortable.Especially because we have to get everything in harmony. On a road course like this, that’s very important. I was able to push myself to the limit and today’s lap was probably my best time of the season. Let’s see what I can do tomorrow. It’s a new course so we have to stay focused and the conditions are going to be cool and difficult so we just have to be ready. The goal is to get a big score. ”
Sergeant: “I’m definitely a happy boy. It’s great to see what we’ve been working on. I feel like this potential has been there for a while. But in the end I was able to put everything together in the three qualifying sessions, so it was good. It was tough at the end, so it was good to be a few hundredths faster than 10th. For the team. It was a great day and I think we had a good race car.”
Bottas: “I’m really happy with tonight’s performance. This is a great result for us and gives us a good opportunity to pick up some points tomorrow It was a difficult Q1, but otherwise both cars could have finished in the top. Either way, we can be happy with our pace, especially since we had no idea where we would end up in this race. We were able to find the right window to drive the car and we were able to extract more power in every part of qualifying. There is never a single silver bullet, but we have implemented all the elements properly. There are a lot of little leeway that worked well for us and made a big difference in the end result. ”
Magnussen: “I’m really happy to be in the top spot.” As for qualifying, I did well in qualifying, but on race day I fell behind. Try to avoid it tomorrow. There was a lot of tire graining yesterday, so we’ll see how we deal with it because that will be very important for the race. We will do our best and see what we can do. ”
Ricardo: “I think as a team we are struggling to find grip this weekend on this new asphalt with low grip. This asphalt is shiny and open to the public during the day. We made some pretty big changes and made some progress overnight, but there wasn’t much we could do today. We’re definitely struggling more with the speed on the laps and having to get the tires working properly. So I’m happy with the improvement that allowed me to advance to Q2. I think we’ll be stronger in the long run, so I’m more optimistic about tomorrow. I don’t know what will happen in the race, but I’m very happy. I think the results will be close.”
This is how the qualifying for the F1 Las Vegas GP went like this
