If one were to assess the Canadian weekend at the Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve in Montreal, Ferrari would hardly return to Europe after the overseas trip with smiles on their faces, not only because of pure performance issues but also because in Montreal the clean execution was missing, which further damaged an already uphill Grand Prix.
After the race, Charles Leclerc did not hide how his mistake in the first free practice session, when he crashed into the barriers damaging the chassis, as well as the lost chance in qualifying to fight for the front rows, had a significant impact on Ferrari’s results, which fell short of their ambitions and brightest hopes.
Realistically, looking also at the comparison between Oscar Piastri and Lewis Hamilton in qualifying, the second row could have been an achievable target for the Monegasque, while it would have been much harder to snatch the top two positions from George Russell and Max Verstappen.
While Lewis Hamilton’s race was essentially compromised by hitting a groundhog after about ten laps, causing a floor damage equivalent to losing twenty downforce points, for the other Ferrari driver, starting position weighed heavily: starting eighth forced strategic risks, as McLaren did with Lando Norris. From here came the choice to start on hard tires, hoping both to run in clean air to express pace and to take advantage of a favorable Safety Car incident at the right moment. After the race, much was discussed about strategy, especially about possible scenarios if Ferrari had followed Charles Leclerc’s suggestion, who called for a one-stop strategy.
The Ferrari driver said after the race that he had been quite confident in the first part of the race, especially when he saw George Russell had just stopped to put on a new hard tire and in the end was not that much faster. The Monegasque driver acknowledged George Russell was faster, but only by about four tenths, and added that the strategy would not have made a difference anyway.
Charles Leclerc’s argument actually makes sense because during the early laps of the second stint, the gap to the Mercedes driver, until they caught up, was around three tenths on average. This is why the Monegasque wanted to push his team toward a one-stop race, as he believed at that point there was potential to stay out and try something different. However, realistically, the choice to stay out, as Charles Leclerc himself admitted after the Canadian Grand Prix, would not have really made a difference or led to a different result because the variables were not exactly in his favor, so much so that McLaren also opted for two stops.
After the race, Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur said he had spoken with Charles Leclerc, agreeing that when a driver is behind the pack, there is little to lose and some risks can be taken. However, the French manager explained that for their team it was somewhat too optimistic to attempt a 50-lap stint on that tire, given its lifespan before performance dropped off. He also noted that they likely lacked sufficient laps over the weekend to properly estimate the tire’s durability.
It is true that other drivers tried the one-stop strategy, completing well over fifty laps, but at a completely different, significantly slower pace than Charles Leclerc’s. Looking more deeply into the situation, as anticipated, the Monegasque’s words made sense but were based on the rivals’ pace before they caught him, when no one was pushing to avoid stressing tires at a crucial phase.
In fact, observing George Russell’s pace, but also Kimi Antonelli’s, who was virtually third and fighting for the podium at the time, the pace dropped by several tenths after clearing traffic. Both Ferrari and McLaren decided not to push, choosing to pit before the leaders showed their true potential.
Even assuming an average pace around low 1.16 seconds, the pace Charles Leclerc was maintaining before being caught by George Russell and Max Verstappen, the gap would have been too large to capitalize on compared to the pace shown later by other drivers. Two more factors must be kept in mind: logically, Charles Leclerc would have suffered the same degradation as other drivers, so realistically his pace would never have stayed fixed at low 1:16. The Monegasque would have had to extend the stint by at least another twenty laps compared to when he actually pitted, to minimize time spent on the medium tires.
Considering many would have already overtaken him in their second stints, the Ferrari driver would have found himself in a situation where others could maintain a fast and consistent pace on hards, while he would have had to grit his teeth and keep extending the stint until the target around lap 50, as pitting too early would bring no advantage. The only hope to gain something was represented by a Safety Car, but even there the chances were limited, because they depended on very specific variables. Ideally, it would have had to come out after all other drivers had already stopped for their second pit stop, but not too early to force Charles Leclerc to do too many laps on mediums.
Again, the window in which this strategy could have worked was very narrow. There is finally a third element to consider: the pit lane. The effectiveness of the two-stop strategy was not only due to the degradation seen at the Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve in Montreal with the softer compounds but also because the pit stop time loss is among the shortest in the world. Therefore, even opting for a one-stop, the final position would not have changed.
This leads to the real theme of the weekend: how much Ferrari faltered in execution rather than pace itself, aside from the last stint on mediums when the competition was already far ahead. There were moments when the SF-25 single-seater showed good pace, but in a race mostly played on track position, starting so far back was a major disadvantage.
Frederic Vasseur explained that the Maranello team had made too many mistakes from the start, including the incident in the first free practice session, the qualifying error, and the groundhog incident for the British driver during the Montreal race. The French manager emphasized that the competition is so tight that losing positions from one weekend to the next is possible without a perfect weekend, highlighting how the lack of execution—something that had allowed the team to exceed the SF-25 car’s real value on other occasions, was a key issue.
The Ferrari team principal added that the main problem lies in using the tires well, understanding them, and selecting the right ones for qualifying. He noted that often in qualifying the SF-25 struggles to exploit the tires as effectively as it does in the race, where it tends to be more competitive, except in cases where it needs to reduce sliding wear, as seen in the Spanish Grand Prix weekend. Frederic Vasseur described this as a quite difficult task and believed that Max Verstappen and Mercedes had done a better job that weekend compared to McLaren and Ferrari. He also pointed out that tire choice is important, probably from the very start of the weekend, requiring decisions to be made almost as early as Friday morning.
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