Fred Vasseur: “We’ll review the entire weekend to see if we could have done anything better” | F1 Italian GP. Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur reflects on the Italian GP at Monza.

Fred Vasseur: “We were close to McLaren. It was Verstappen who was exceptional”

The Ferrari team principal shared his thoughts after the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, where both SF-25 cars missed out on the podium despite strong performances.

Low tyre degradation in the race

No victory and not even a podium finish. Ferrari’s home weekend ended with a sense of disappointment, as the Scuderia had to settle for fourth place with Charles Leclerc and sixth with Lewis Hamilton. The British driver managed to climb four places from his starting grid position, while the Monegasque initially held off Oscar Piastri’s McLaren in the opening laps. However, the illusion was short-lived, and soon car #16 had to give way to the current championship leader.

Speaking to Sky Sport F1 after the race, Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur analyzed what went wrong and why the SF-25 could not achieve a stronger result. “We were battling with Oscar Piastri at the start, but probably used up a lot of tyre life in the opening laps and then suffered a little afterwards,” the Frenchman explained. “Later on, the pace came back, and we were able to extend the stint, but we probably paid the price for that fight. The track improved a lot during the race, but as you saw, there was no real degradation. Tyre wear was almost zero and was balanced by the track evolution. We were all more or less in the same window, with differences of only a few hundredths.”

Max Verstappen made the difference

Looking back, Fred Vasseur believes the decisive factor at Monza was the human element: Max Verstappen. “Tomorrow we’ll go over the entire weekend again and see if we could have done anything better. If we compare ourselves with McLaren, this was one of our best weekends of the season. We finished only five or six seconds behind them. What was exceptional was Max with the Red Bull. In fact, especially Max, because the other Red Bull was much further back. And Lewis? He did very well, he recovered strongly. At Monza it’s never easy starting from tenth place.” – the French manager concluded.