Lewis Hamilton and his Mercedes team will be looking to capitalize on any mistakes made by Ferrari in Qatar after Charles Leclerc admitted it was likely to be a nightmare weekend.
Charles Leclerc has warned Lewis Hamilton and his Mercedes team by admitting Ferrari’s chances at the Qatar Grand Prix are slim as it is a sprint weekend.
This format means there will be just one training session for all teams on Friday, taking place throughout the day. This means the weather will be significantly warmer than at nightfall.
With qualifying on Friday night, everyone’s car settings will be locked early. And because of the temperature difference, it will be difficult to know more about their car’s performance as the track cools. There are also other unknowns when it comes to racing. It has been resurfaced, which may cause it to perform differently, while the lack of a support event means there will be no rubber left other than the F1 tires in this test session.
Such unknowns will worry Ferrari. Although their racing pace has been more stable since the summer break, the Italian team has had to deal with significant tire deterioration throughout the season, while the car itself is particularly sensitive to environmental changes.
Because of these factors, Leclerc is worried about what the weekend has in store for me. “It’s definitely going to be difficult because we have extremely hot temperatures where it usually takes us a little bit of time to understand what the cooling limits are and so on,” said the Monegasque driver.
And now we only have one session, on a track that has also been completely redone, so there’s a lot we have to learn in one session. So it could go extremely well or extremely badly. We have done a lot of work to prepare for this race, to make sure it goes well, so I hope it happens.”
Any mistake by Ferrari will open the door for Mercedes. The Silver Arrows still occupy second place in the constructors’ championship, but the gap between the two teams has narrowed since the summer break. He currently has just 20 points and the result in Qatar this weekend could be crucial to the outcome of this battle to finish behind Red Bull. Despite his team’s recent struggles, Lewis Hamilton said the atmosphere in the Mercedes camp is strong.
It’s positive. I think everyone is happy to be here,” he told reporters. “The weather is very nice. On Thursday, you recovered from the difficult challenges you faced in the previous race and you came here with optimism. One of the things we’re really good at is having an optimistic outlook.”
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