MONTREAL, Canada -- Ferrari is confident it has made progress on the issues that have left its drivers off the pace when it comes to the final stage of qualifying at recent races.
At the last two rounds Sebastian Vettel has looked competitive during qualifying simulations in the final practice session but has not been able to maintain that pace in qualifying. Both drivers have struggled to get the tyres in the right operating window ahead of their Q3 lap and, as a result, failed to qualify in the top three in Spain and Monaco.
After Ferrari again looked competitive in second practice in Canada on Friday, chief engineer Jock Clear said the team is now more confident it can convert that into qualifying pace on Saturday.
"Like all of these things in F1, it's never one specific thing," he said. "It's generally a combination of a number of things. Obviously Red Bull have made improvements and have qualified strongly recently. We've underperformed in Q3, having felt we had the pace to compete right at the front and then dropped away at the end.
"Was it a tyre issue? Was it set-up? That's the conundrum we have to try to unravel and I think we are some way to doing that now. I think that some of things we have looked at in the last couple of weeks, after Barcelona and Monaco, are pointing us in the right direction.
"But it's all relative and our pace is always going to be judged by the people that are right at the front and until we're right at the front we're not going to be satisfied. So we just keep searching for that performance."
Part of the pursuit of performance has been a new turbocharger for this weekend's race. Clear said it is bringing a performance boost that should be felt on the long straights of the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.
"Obviously you don't arrive with these things fresh out of the box. It's done a lot of work on the dynos back at home. It's been fully calibrated. We should know what to expect and the good thing about today is that we've had no surprises in that respect. It's doing what it said on the tin.
"We try and bring a development to the car as soon as possible and accelerating that development, bringing those things to the track as fast as possible has some risk involved. Were we to try and get that turbo to Monaco, the benefits would not have been huge around Monaco and the risk would have been another two weeks less of development. So it's a balanced risk that we're always working on in all of our developments and Canada we decided that risk was decided to be worth taking.
"It's a circuit that will benefit the upgrade that we've bought; it's a circuit where we should be able to clearly see the benefits for ourselves - and that's important to justify and to close the loop on that development from the factory point of view. Had we brought it to Monaco, as I say, it's debateable whether we would have seen much benefit and whether we would have exactly been able to pick the bones out of it. We've brought it here as a strategic decision: this is the kind of circuit where it is going to benefit us and, as I say from the earlier question, we're seeing that today in our data. So we're happy."