Ferrari leaves Canada once again with a bitter taste. The fifth and sixth places achieved by Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton reflect yet another weekend in which the feeling is that the result that could have been achieved was missed. And it happened on the same day another part of Ferrari’s sporting world claimed a third consecutive victory at the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
At the end of the Montreal race, Frédéric Vasseur spoke to Sky Sport F1 to comment on the Canadian weekend. The French manager pointed to the many mistakes committed over the weekend. No names were mentioned, but the reference was clear and directed at Leclerc, who had a crash on Friday and a qualifying mistake on Saturday that partly compromised today’s race.
Would things have changed if Charles Leclerc had done only one pit stop instead of two?
“I honestly don’t think so. If we look at the top 5, they all did two stops. Maybe a one-stop strategy could have worked, but we didn’t know the possible lifespan of the Medium tyres. But that wasn’t the most important point of the weekend. We made too many mistakes and had too many problems. We did Free Practice 1 with only one car, then the mistake in qualifying. Then the issue in the race with Lewis — it’s too much for a single weekend.”
So, basically, it’s down to too many errors…
“Yesterday in qualifying we set the fastest first sector (by Charles Leclerc before the Q3 mistake, editor’s note), and then we aborted the lap. Our pace isn’t far off. The problem comes when we fail to put everything together. Because then we lose race pace if we’re stuck in traffic. We don’t need to change everything. If we could redo the weekend without missing Free Practice 2 and without testing such long stints, maybe we would have had fewer problems in the race.”
Yesterday Lewis said in an interview that Ferrari isn’t bringing any updates. When will they come?
“Soon. We’ll have some updates soon. But I don’t think that’s the main issue. If you’re setting a fastest first sector here, I don’t think you need to bring lots of updates. It’s not like the others are bringing upgrades every weekend, and it’s not like we’re bringing nothing — we just don’t always announce them. We need to focus on ourselves, because we didn’t do a clean job this weekend.”
I don’t know if it’s fair to say you’re under attack. I think it’s right to restore calm and stability to the team, because we saw mistakes from Charles that don’t usually happen.
“I don’t want to go back to what I said in recent days. I don’t think the atmosphere around the team is helping us. We’re not under pressure, but there is tension. When you’re in such a tight battle, all this doesn’t help the team or the drivers. They’re making too many mistakes, and so are we. We need calm and composure, but not everything is in my hands.”
Do you feel the trust of the ownership?
“Yes, yes, that’s not a problem. That issue doesn’t exist. The important thing is that everyone is pushing in the same direction, but more than anything, we need serenity. I don’t want to have to fight with everyone inside and outside. We want to fight as a team. We know we won’t do a perfect job every weekend. We’ve seen Mercedes struggle enormously in recent weekends, but they didn’t start a revolution. They had three tough weekends, but they kept working, developing, and today they succeeded. We need to do the same. We’re second in the championship — it’s not the end of the world. We need to keep doing our job.”
