Ferrari Not Placing Focus on Championship Gap in COTA

Ferrari is “not doing the math” looking at its points lead as it enters the final phase of the FIA World Endurance Championship campaign according to its performance and regulations manager Mauro Barbieri, who said the Prancing Horse will aim to put together ‘the best performance we can’ at Circuit of The Americas.

The Italian manufacturer enters the Lone Star Le Mans weekend leading both the drivers’ and manufacturers’ standings, although its points lead has decreased somewhat after a disappointing outing at the 6 Hours of Sao Paulo in July.

James Calado, Antonio Giovinazzi and Alessandro Pier Guidi hold a 12-point advantage over Robert Kubica, Yifei Ye and Phil Hanson, with the No. 12 Cadillac V-Series.R crew third on 68 points after their Brazil victory.

Cadillac closed in on Ferrari in the manufacturers’ standings thanks to its 1-2 at Interlagos, with a gap of 55 points now in place with the final three races in Austin, Fuji and Bahrain remaining.

Despite that, Barbieri stated Ferrari is not heading into the COTA race with an explicit focus on the championship standings.

“In the end, the target of increasing the lead in the championship is not against the target of doing the best result that you can or trying to win the race,” Barbieri said. “So I think nothing specific.

“You try not to do any stupid things, getting penalties that make you lose positions on track, trying to stay out of crashes and make sure that the reliability is as good as possible and then on the performance side trying to take the best out of the car.

“We’re not doing the math looking [if] we might score fifth and if that would be enough. There’s still too much to go.

“The basic principle is just to try and score as many points as we can and then we’ll see.

“But I would be surprised if the championship fight will not be still open in Bahrain honestly.

“So as I said, just trying to make a clean race with the best performance that we can and then we’ll see the points.”

Ferrari won last year’s six-hour contest in Austin, as its satellite No. 83 499P triumphed in the hands of Kubica, Ye and Robert Shwartzman.

Despite that, points leader Calado struck a more realistic tone when asked about Ferrari’s prospects for this weekend.

“We’ve got to be focused on not getting penalties, because it’s something we had a lot of this year,” Calado said.

“It’s more about trying to stay towards the front as much as we can.

“We won’t be dominant last year with pole position and two cars leading the race in the first hour. I’m not sure we are going to see that.

“The weather conditions will play a part from what I can see, it could be a bit thundery and in America when there is a lightning storm they stop the race. We need to be quite clever if that happens as well.

“Fifth is in my mind in terms of outright pace. For sure we won’t be as strong as we were at this track last year, but I hope we’ll be there or thereabouts to fight.

“We’ll try and score points as we are leading the championship, and that’s the most important goal.

“It’s a good track for the car, we were really quick, and even though [the No. 51 car] didn’t finish last year it was good to know the car works here better than somewhere like Brazil.

“The higher speed corners generally suit our car better. But you never know until you’re out on track.”

Jamie Klein contributed to this report