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Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur was dismayed by their performance in qualifying after his cars were out-qualified by both Williams drivers.
Charles Leclerc took eighth on the grid, immediately behind the two FW47s. Lewis Hamilton failed to make the cut for Q3 and will start 12th.
“It was a bad quali,” admitted Vasseur, who said the drivers weren’t able to improve their lap times on fresh tyres.
“We struggled a lot to put a lap together with the new soft [tyres],” he said. “We did our fastest lap with scrubbed [tyres] and that’s not the right way to do quali.”
Ferrari haven’t been competitive in qualifying generally since the season began but their problems were particularly acute in Miami. “We are already from the beginning of the season struggling more in quali than in the race, but today was too much,” said Vasseur.
The only up-side to Saturday in Miami for Ferrari was Hamilton’s drive to third place in the sprint race.
“Lewis did a very good race this morning with a good call for the strategy, the pit stop and so on,” said Vasseur. “At the end he finished on the podium.
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“Now, [the grand prix] will be another story. So far in the season we had always better pace on Sunday than Saturday, and let’s see what we can do.”
Leclerc, who made the cut for Q3 by just four hundredths of a second, admitted he was frustrated by the team’s dip in form since the start of the season.
“It’s just not good enough,” he said. “It’s frustrating because it’s those kind of days, it has been quite a few races already that I feel I’m doing a really good job but when you are finishing P4, P5, P6, P7, P8, it is just a shame.
“I have no satisfaction of doing a good job, I’m just hoping that we can turn the situation around as soon as possible but at the moment that’s the situation we are in and there’s not much I can do.”
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