Ferrari boss Fred Vasseur has stated that the mood within Ferrari is “very positive” following pre-season testing in Bahrain, with the team chief hopeful that the squad can “fight for both championships” with their new pairing of Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc.
Leclerc set the pace during Friday’s morning session on the final day of testing, while Hamilton took over driving duties for the afternoon and ended the day in sixth place on the timesheets, with Leclerc’s earlier time eventually putting him in ninth.
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Given the mixed weather conditions that played out across the three-day test, Vasseur acknowledged that the true state of play may not become clear until the season-opening Australian Grand Prix in two weeks’ time.
However, the Frenchman sounded bullish as he spoke of the optimistic atmosphere within the Scuderia heading into Melbourne.
“It has been hard to get a clear read on the overall situation here in Bahrain, as the conditions were changing quite a lot day by day and from the morning to the afternoon, so it was more similar to Vegas than to the Bahrain we usually know,” said Vasseur.
Leclerc set the pace on Friday morning in Bahrain
“Over the past six months, we have worked very hard on this car and have made a good improvement, but we will have to wait until we are all on track in Melbourne to understand where we are.
“If we look at the hierarchy of previous years, what we saw here was not the same as in qualifying a week later, under the same conditions. We will go from 10-15 degrees on the track to the 45 we will have in Australia, so in Melbourne, it will probably be a whole different story.
“We want to fight for both championships, as we know we have two drivers who can do it, and the mood in the team is very positive. We will continue to work hard to be ready in two weeks’ time for the start of the season.”
Hamilton also reflected positively on his first pre-season test as a Ferrari driver, despite his running on Friday afternoon having to end earlier than expected.
“Overall, it’s been a great few days and we’ve made some strong progress as a team,” the seven-time World Champion commented. “We had to finish a little earlier than planned today, and the weather has been hard to predict all week, but that’s how testing works sometimes, and we’ve managed to gather a lot of good information to build on before the season starts.
Hamilton has praised the «strong progress» made by Ferrari during pre-season testing
“The whole team has done an incredible job, and I’m so excited to get to the first race in Melbourne. I can’t wait to go racing with them.”
Leclerc, meanwhile, echoed Vasseur’s view that the picture of where everybody stands is not entirely clear yet, but the Monegasque was pleased with the amount of learning that the team were able to take from the three-day test.
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“This has been a very different type of pre-season testing, because of the inconsistent weather in Bahrain making it hard to come to any real conclusions,” added Leclerc.
“The wind changed from run to run, there was even some rain yesterday, and temperatures fluctuated over the course of the week, so all the teams head to the first race with some more unknowns compared to the past few years. We still learned a huge amount, especially in terms of the way the car feels now that we’ve actually been out on track.
“We will return to Maranello and spend some time in the simulator, to look for the last details that could make a difference in Melbourne, but also to correlate the feeling in the sim to that in the real car. We are fully focused on maximising our performance over the coming week and I really look forward to kicking off the season.”
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