Frédéric Vasseur and Ferrari faced another less-than-ideal weekend at Silverstone, home of the British Grand Prix.
The final fifth place for Carlos Sainz and the out-of-the-points finish for Charles Leclerc perfectly capture the current difficulties of a team that has followed the same performance pattern for too many years. Strong starts are followed by terrible progress, with car updates struggling to work as hoped.
Fred Vasseur, at the end of the British race, spoke to Sky Sport to comment on the race, immediately explaining the aggressive strategies chosen for Leclerc’s race.
Vasseur, can you explain the strategy chosen for Leclerc? The Intermediates were put on too early…
“After the race, it’s certainly easier to make strategy decisions. We gave the same information to our drivers at that moment, but they were in different situations. Carlos was fighting with Verstappen and at that time was even faster than him. So, he was copying Max’s race. Charles spent the first stint behind Stroll and was already 10 seconds behind. This pushed the team and Charles to make an aggressive decision. On the lap Charles came in, Hamilton and Russell went off at turn 1, we thought it could work, but it didn’t.”
Were these decisions, therefore, a result of circumstances?
“We made those decisions due to the circumstances we found ourselves in because if we had been in better positions from the start of the weekend, at the front, we certainly wouldn’t have made such aggressive decisions as we did.”
Today the race seemed very complex. Cars fast in the dry struggled in the wet and vice versa…
“Today the conditions and tire difficulties were the same for everyone. I’d say it was also about how much energy was put into the tires in the first laps. Carlos, in the first part of each stint, was conservative and always had a good second part of the stint. At the start, he was always slower than the front-runners because he was managing, then he was always a bit faster. Maybe with Carlos, we should have pitted one lap earlier in the last pit stop. But overall, he had an excellent race.”
Can the internal situation, with Enrico Cardile seemingly about to leave Maranello, be a source of distraction and disruption?
“Our problem isn’t discussions about Cardile’s or Newey’s positions. It’s more the people around the team who talk about it. We never start our debriefings talking about this, it’s not a topic of discussion for us. But it’s also true that the last four Grand Prix have been very difficult for us. In Canada, we had reliability problems, then with the introduction of the new package in Spain, we faced difficulties. In Spielberg, we did some good things, but we struggled. Here it was a bit the same. The potential wasn’t so bad if we look at today’s race. At the end of the first stint, Carlos was a few tenths behind Verstappen.”
From the data collected this weekend among the evolutionary packages, do you already know what you’ll use in Hungary?
“We will decide later which spec to use in Hungary, it’s not a topic now. Here at Silverstone, we had bouncing, but today things went better. I think we can bring these improvements to the next weekend.”
Today Hamilton, one of the two Ferrari drivers from 2025, returned to victory. A good sign for you too…
“I’m happy for Lewis, but I’m focused on this season. We already have enough problems and discussions at the moment. We’ll welcome him later. Now we need to regain the same momentum from the first part of the season because we’re still second in the championship and if we can get back to scoring points with both cars, I’m sure the situation can improve.”
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