Fred Vasseur not looking for excuses: "Format not to blame. A good lesson from Alfa Romeo"

Fred Vasseur not looking for excuses: “Format not to blame. A good lesson from Alfa Romeo”. Fred not looking for excuses.

Ferrari missing from Qualifying in Hungary
Sixth place for Charles Leclerc in the Qualifying session for the Hungarian Grand Prix, while Carlos Sainz was even eliminated in Q2: a difficult Saturday afternoon at the Hungaroring for the Maranello team in a Qualifying session that also had an unexpected victim in Q1 (George Russell, last year’s pole sitter). Sergio Perez managed to break his streak of absences from Q3, only to end up in ninth place, far behind Max Verstappen, who was beaten by a sparkling Lewis Hamilton by just three thousandths of a second.

The British driver made a triumphant return to pole position – a specialty of his that hadn’t been seen since Jeddah 2021, where the Dutchman snatched pole position with an error at the last corner.

The balance for Scuderia Ferrari is clearly negative, even though points will be awarded tomorrow, and the SF-23 cars showed consistent pace in the FP3. Frederic Vasseur had set the goal for Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz to be in the top two rows, an objective that was missed by quite a margin. Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari SF-23 is behind Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes, Max Verstappen’s Red Bull, the McLarens of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, and the Alfa Romeo of the impressive Guan Yu Zhou.

Ferrari’s team principal, Frederic Vasseur, accepted the disappointing Qualifying without making excuses and pointed out, in an interview with Sky Sport F1, the lesson to be learned from Alfa Romeo in terms of the obsession with updates, when sometimes it’s enough to optimize the available package: “It has nothing to do with the format, which is the same for everyone. We struggled to get a clear picture of the situation before the session and to manage the tires well. We didn’t do a good job in tire management. Did I expect more from Charles? Yes, but the battle was very tight. You lose a row by a few hundredths. In these cases, you can always do something more. We were ahead of Lewis throughout the session, but in the end, we couldn’t do it. Being behind Max was more predictable. Am I surprised by Alfa Romeo? I think everyone is. They didn’t bring updates. It’s a valuable lesson. We all always focus on updates, but they didn’t bring anything specific, yet they went from the back to the front positions. This means that by interpreting the package you have well, you can make progress. I think this is a good lesson.” – the French manager explained at the end of the Qualifying session for the 2023 Hungarian Grand Prix in Budapest.