Vasseur pinpoints where Ferrari “failed massively” in F1 Canadian GP

Frederic Vasseur has said Ferrari must take inspiration from Mercedes and step up its race weekend execution to compete for Formula 1 wins. 

A quick look at the results shows Ferrari was a distant fourth-quickest team in Canada, with Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton in no man’s land as they respectively finished fifth and sixth.

But the real story of the Scuderia’s weekend was one of missed opportunities and botched race execution, which has become a recurring theme this year.

Leclerc, who crashed in FP1 and skipped FP2 as a result, looked on course to mix it up on the front two rows until he suffered a snap in dirty air during qualifying, leaving him eighth on the grid with Hamilton fifth. The race wasn’t plain sailing either, with Hamilton suffering performance loss from hitting a groundhog, while Leclerc disagreed with his team over tyre strategies.

The Monegasque felt confident he could pull off a one-stop race, but instead the team converted him to a two-stopper which guaranteed he would finish well behind the frontrunners, much to his frustration.

“He’s right that we have not that much to lose when you are behind the pack,” Vasseur conceded. “We can take some risks, but for us it was a bit too optimistic to do one stint of 50 laps with the hards in terms of tyre life. We were missing, probably also, some laps during the weekend to estimate it.”

Although Leclerc’s disagreement with the team was broadcast and therefore attracted a lot of public attention, Vasseur pointed to more meaningful factors behind Ferrari’s underwhelming Montreal result.

“We showed that we were on the pace when Charles set a purple sector one in qualifying,” Vasseur said. “It was the weak point all over the weekend. I don’t want to say that we would have done the pole position, but at least we would have been in a good shape.

“We made too many mistakes collectively from the beginning with the crash in FP1, with the mistake in qualifying, with the marmot in the race. At the end, the fight is so tight. You can change positions for almost nothing from one weekend to another if you don’t do the perfect weekend.

“It’s a good lesson also from Mercedes. They were nowhere the last three weekends, and they were able to have the two cars on the podium this weekend. I’m not sure that they changed completely the car. From lap one on Friday morning, they were there, they did a good job in the preparation.”

Vasseur conceded Ferrari may have missed a trick by not qualifying on the more consistent mediums, which polesitter George Russell and second-placed Max Verstappen did to good effect.

“The main issue is to have a good tyre usage first, understand the tyres and to choose the good ones for the qualifying,” he added.

Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

“The exercise is quite difficult. I think Max and Mercedes did a better job on the weekend than McLaren and us, but it’s also in the choice of the tyres, probably from the beginning of the weekend. And this you have to commit to from Friday morning almost.

“There is more performance from using the tyres than there is between the cars. It’s true this weekend, it was true in Monaco, it was true in Imola. We have to do a better job.

“We were able to be in front in Monaco. We were able to be in front in the first part of the qualifying lap here. But if we want to start from the first rows, we need to do a very smooth weekend in terms of execution. And it’s where we failed massively in Canada.”

Additional reporting by Mark Mann-Bryans