D'Ambrosio reflects on his special day as Fred Vasseur's replacement as Ferrari' team boss at Spielberg
After Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur was forced to leave Austria ahead of the race for personal reasons, Jerome D'Ambrosio took over he responsibility of acting as the Scuderia's team principal on race day at the Austrian Grand Prix.
Following a strong qualifying performance, Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton started from second and fourth on the grid at today’s Austrian Grand Prix.
The start of the race was aborted and delayed by 15 minutes, after Carlos Sainz was unable to leave the grid on the formation lap. The opening lap saw Kimi Antonelli crash into the back of Max Verstappen's Red Bull which forced the race direction to deploy the the Safety Car.
Leclerc and Hamilton both started on medium tyres and went for a two-stop strategy, switching first to Hard and then back to Medium for the final stint.
Having lost second place to Oscar Piastri after the start, Leclerc delivered a measured performance to grab a podium finish after his third place at the Spanish Grand Prix.
Hamilton also had a relatively straightforward race, never really able to challenge his team-mate, but he was able to escape from Mercedes driver George Russell after their intense battle on the opening lap.
Having grabbed a third and fourth place finish at the Red Bull Ring, the Scuderia picked up 27 points and is now back in 2nd place in the Constructors’ championship.
Reflecting on Ferrari's day on which he acted as the Scuderia's team boss, Jerome D'Ambrosio reckoned that the Italian team completed a perfect and clean weekend at the Red Bull Ring.
"We can be happy with this result. For a while now, Fred’s been saying we just need to put everything together and have a clean weekend and that’s what we did.
"Today, in a clean race, both our drivers ran a very similar pace. Obviously, the gap to McLaren is still big, especially during the race, but we’ll keep on pushing to close it down.
Signing off with a word for the championship standings, D'Ambrosio noted: "The gaps between the teams change from race to race, so you just have to focus on yourself and do the best you can.
"Today, we moved back up to second in the Constructors’ even if by an extremely small margin and everyone in the team is keen to keep pushing to improve and do even better.
"As for stepping into Fred’s shoes, the reality is that in this team we have a lot of good people who know what they’re doing and so it didn’t really change anything in the process. The team operated well and the race was pretty straightforward from our perspective."
