“A gap of 3 tenths per lap between us and the McLarens and Max Verstappen? Yes, I think that’s an accurate assessment,” said team principal Fred Vasseur, speaking to Sky Sport F1. “Today, saying we were 2–3 tenths behind in qualifying and 2–3 tenths behind on average during the race seems like a fairly precise picture. You can always do better over a weekend, but I think that’s true for everyone. The picture we have now is probably the current reality, and we need to work from here.”
Updates? We’ll wait
Fred Vasseur also explained Lewis Hamilton’s lack of a comeback: starting on hard tyres while others were on mediums, the seven-time world champion couldn’t recover ground on the Mercedes cars when he switched to yellow tyres, while the others were on hards. “There wasn’t a big difference between the hard and medium compounds. In the end, degradation was almost the same between the two, and performance was also nearly the same. That’s why Lewis was able to follow the pace of the others at the start of the race on hards, and didn’t have a significantly better pace at the end when he was on mediums — because the difference between the two compounds was very small,” the French manager explained.
Regarding the delicate matter of updates to bring to the SF-25, Fred Vasseur made it clear there’s no rush: “Before bringing updates and raising the performance level, we need to fix the problems we had in the last race with balance, making the most of the car we currently have. Once we’ve maximised it, then it will make sense to take a step forward. But let’s take it one race at a time and focus on that. We’ll definitely bring updates, but I think everyone else will too. We shouldn’t expect everything to be turned upside down in a single day. Let’s try to get the most out of the car. I’m sure we still have untapped potential, and it will be a challenge in the next two races.” – the French manager concluded at the end of the Japanese Grand Prix.
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