Vettel labels Ferrari F1 car as "difficult" and a "handful" to drive

Ferrari’s struggles look set to continue into its home race at the Italian Grand Prix with Sebastian Vettel describing his Formula 1 car as "difficult" and a "handful" to drive after Friday practice.

While it looked more encouraging than it did last time at Spa-Francorchamps, Ferrari looks unlikely that it will have two cars in Q3 on Saturday.

Charles Leclerc ended practice in ninth, while Vettel only managed 12th fastest overall.

Given Ferrari’s limited engine power, it’s no surprise to Vettel to see it struggling once again.

"The car is difficult to drive, but like I said, it’s not the first time," Vettel said. "Where are we lacking? Down the straights as expected, but in terms of where we want to have a better car to drive, we’re lacking grip on corner entry. Pretty much all four wheels are sliding quite a lot. It’s a handful but it’s very difficult to get everything right, to get the lap together. But we’re trying to make that a bit better for tomorrow."

Vettel believes the high tyre pressures set by Pirelli at the start of the weekend are a major factor to why it’s been so hard to find a balance with the car this weekend.

"I think that’s going to be the same for everyone," Vettel added. "Part of the contributor for that in the race is the balloon pressure that we are forced to run at. That doesn’t help, it’s far away from where the tyres would like to run.

"But we have to obviously stick to the rules. Apart from that, it will be a tricky one in the race. We’ll be fighting a lot of cars, we’ll be in the pack. It’s not like racing at the front in clean air, having a nice car. But that’s something to worry on Sunday, for now we worry for tomorrow and hopefully get a better car. The better the car, the better the result will be on Sunday."

Leclerc was happy with Ferrari’s qualifying pace but says the race pace and use of the tyres needs to be improved if it is to have a chance of scoring points.

"Yeah, I think we expected a bit worse on the low fuel runs, but then on the high fuel, we expected a bit better," Leclerc said. "So we definitely need to try and find something for the race otherwise it’s going to be very, very difficult. We seem to struggle quite a lot with the balance and the overall degradation of the tyres during the high-fuel run. So there’s definitely a lot on that, but quite positive to see our qualifying pace."