Fred Vasseur’s verdict on Zandvoort: “Good reaction after the worst Friday in 3 years”
The Ferrari Team Principal reflected on a challenging weekend at Zandvoort, where the Scuderia left the Netherlands without scoring points. Despite the setbacks, Frederic Vasseur found positives in the way the team reacted and in the performance shown by Lewis Hamilton.
A weekend that started badly
Ferrari recorded their second double retirement of the season after the one in China. Lewis Hamilton crashed into the barriers after a mistake at Turn 3, while Charles Leclerc was forced to retire early following contact with Andrea Kimi Antonelli. Beyond the incidents themselves, the Dutch Grand Prix highlighted how far Ferrari had slipped from the strong form displayed in Budapest. The SF-25 started from the wrong setup base, which the engineers partially corrected during the weekend. Fred Vasseur chose to focus on the way the team recovered from the difficult start, while also underlining Hamilton’s growing feeling with the car as two of the few positives from Zandvoort.
“We had one of the worst Fridays of the past three years,” admitted Fred Vasseur. “If you look at our pace in free practice, we were in big trouble. Nothing was working. In that situation the drivers were very collaborative, trying to find solutions to recover. For that reason, I can be more than satisfied with the work done, as well as with Hamilton’s pace, because when he lost the car he was behind Russell.”
The Frenchman noted that Saturday was an important step forward: “On Saturday we had a very good reaction. It was not enough to fight with Max Verstappen, but we were not far off and today we were in a good position.” He remained cautious, however, about how much more Charles Leclerc could have achieved without being stuck behind Isack Hadjar: “I don’t have a crystal ball, but in those situations when you spend two or three laps behind someone, everything overheats. At a certain point we had to ask him to slow down slightly to avoid overheating. Even if we weren’t on the same strategy as Verstappen, I had the feeling our pace was similar. The only comparison we could make was with Mercedes, since we were racing directly against them and we managed to overtake them.”
No chance against McLaren
If Mercedes provided a reference point, the same could not be said about McLaren. The Woking team’s race pace was described by Toto Wolff as “an humiliation for everyone.” Fred Vasseur added: “It wasn’t just in the final stint. I don’t know if they were pushing or not, but halfway through the second stint they were much faster than us. I think they managed the first ten laps and once they started pushing they were miles ahead of everyone. Clearly they are already a step ahead in qualifying, but they are even further ahead in the race. I wouldn’t go as far as calling it an humiliation, though.”
Antonelli apologises, Lewis Hamilton sees positives
Ferrari left the Netherlands without points, also due to Kimi Antonelli’s collision with Charles Leclerc. Fred Vasseur nevertheless praised the young Italian’s attitude: “He came to apologise. Charles wasn’t there, so he came to me. I appreciated it, because these are things that can happen. Overtaking at Zandvoort is not easy, you have to take risks. He did, he made a mistake, but then he came to admit it and apologise. For me it was a racing incident, because in these situations you know you only have one or two chances at most.”
Hamilton, on the other hand, had only himself to blame for his retirement, but Fred Vasseur preferred to highlight the positives from the British driver’s weekend: “Overall, Lewis’s reaction was good. From the beginning of the weekend he had the pace of Charles and the car. At one point he was catching up to Russell, and that was a strong response after the two difficult races before the summer break. Undoubtedly the result was not what we expected.”
“We spoke after the race and I would say he was much more optimistic than in the last four or five events, because he had the rhythm, he was able to fight with Russell and we managed to recover after a difficult Friday. Of course he lost the car, but he was in good spirits, because Lewis has many positives to take from this weekend to build confidence ahead of Monza,” Fred Vasseur concluded.
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