In Barcelona, Ferrari secured its third podium of the season, a result that earns them second place in the Constructors’ Championship, ahead of Mercedes and Red Bull. In the traditional post-race press conference, Frederic Vasseur acknowledged the team’s progress in terms of performance and results, but made it clear that second place is not enough. The Team Principal set his sights on McLaren, with recovery efforts to include car updates.
May Progress and the Technical Directive
Fred Vasseur was one of the most vocal about the technical directive, suggesting it could be a turning point in the season. The crackdown on flexible wings hasn’t altered the pecking order on track, but the Frenchman clarified: “Even if the gaps shift by just a tenth, that can still make a huge difference in terms of results—although not against McLaren, who are two or three tenths ahead. If you look at the race around lap 40, we were five seconds behind Norris. That means our pace was clearly better compared to three or four races ago, like in Miami, where we were lapped.”
“I’m not saying it’s because of the front wing, but every race paints a different picture. I think we all face the same challenges in fully understanding the tyres. I believe that can make more of a difference than the wing itself. Still, even if it’s not the main performance differentiator, we need to take it into account, because nowadays a tenth can completely reshuffle the grid.” – he added.
On the subject of tyres, the Scuderia has shown progress in tyre usage during qualifying, but Fred Vasseur preached caution: “With tyres, you need to be humble; every weekend starts from a blank sheet. Canada will be a different story. The asphalt will be different, it’ll be colder, and the corners will be different. We shouldn’t assume that what we’ve understood here in Barcelona will apply in two weeks’ time.”
Lewis’s Disappointment and Charles’s Gamble
The Team Principal was then asked about Lewis Hamilton’s visible frustration after the race: “There’s no need to turn this into a controversy. I think Lewis spent about 70% of the race ahead of Russell, and I’m not sure George said the race was a disaster. Plus, we had a problem on the car in the final stint before the Safety Car.” Fred Vasseur revealed that Charles Leclerc also suffered from a technical issue—though a different one—which partly explains the ten seconds lost to the McLaren cars after the restart.
The Monegasque driver celebrated the podium after skipping a second qualifying attempt to save a fresh set of tyres for the race—a gamble Fred Vasseur finds hard to judge as a success or not: “Today we had three sets of fresh tyres, and that probably helped us stay with the McLarens at the start. We overtook two of the three cars ahead of us, and from there the pace was good. When you make this kind of gamble, you can’t only take the positives. You don’t get to have new tyres in the race without paying a price in qualifying. Sometimes you lose nothing over a tenth, other times it costs you two or three grid spots—and that’s what happened on Saturday.”
Eyes on McLaren
Overall, Fred Vasseur expressed relief about second place in the Constructors’ standings, but not satisfaction: “I prefer being second to being fourth or fifth. After the double disqualification in China, we were 50 or 60 points behind Mercedes and Red Bull, and now we’re ahead. I think we’ve done a good job over the last four or five races, but we have to remember we’re here to win. We don’t want to be second—we need to focus on McLaren. I’m not talking about the championship, but about performance. I think in the first 40 laps here we weren’t too far behind. That means we need to keep pushing in the same direction to win races.” – the French manager pointed out at the end of the Spanish Grand Prix.
The recovery will also rely on updates, which go beyond what’s visible: “We’re continuing to push development on the car. Sometimes the upgrades are visible, sometimes we have to declare them to the FIA, other times not.”
