Laurent Mekies of Ferrari has refuted Lando Norris’ claim that the Scuderia has moved ahead of McLaren in the Constructors’ Championship.
Laurent Mekies of Ferrari believes the Scuderia does not have a big pace advantage over McLaren as the battle for third place in the Constructors’ Championship reaches the last races of the season.
McLaren’s Lando Norris stated on Thursday that he believes Ferrari now has a good pace lead over McLaren following the Scuderia’s impressive performance in Turkey. Mekies, on the other hand, refuted Norris’ comments, saying that Istanbul surprised even Ferrari.
“No, we are not a large step ahead,” Mekies said.
“I really don’t think we are. I think, in Turkey, we had a very good performance both on Saturday and Sunday. So it was certainly points that was above our goal.”
Mekies explained why Ferrari appeared to be stronger than expected, with Charles Leclerc even looking like a contender for the race win at one point.
“It’s always a combination of many factors,” he said.
“But we have to see that when we look back at the numbers and we see that, compared to the average of the year, what we were expecting from the track and where we were expecting our competitors to be, we were in a better position there.
“Even if you understand some of the reason why it is happening, [it] doesn’t mean that you can reproduce it here!”
McLaren finished ahead of Ferrari in second practice at the Circuit of the Americas on Friday afternoon, and Mekies expects their usual close battle to continue in the United States Grand Prix.
He added: “Here, we expect it to be very tight with them.
“We think they are a touch faster right now, as you can see on the timesheets, and they were pretty much winning two back-to-back races a month ago.
“We certainly feel they are going to give us a very hard time, but the team is working well and we just need to continue to deliver strong weekends.”
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