Ferrari achieved a good result in Melbourne despite the Mercedes one-two. Frédéric Vasseur defends the strategy of his drivers and is optimistic for the future.
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Ferrari held its own at the Australian Grand Prix with a third place for Charles Leclerc and a fourth for Lewis Hamilton. The Scuderia director, Frédéric Vasseur, believes that his drivers’ strategy was consistent despite the one-two finish by Mercedes.
The deployment of the first Virtual Safety Car, however, sparked criticism of Ferrari’s pit stop management, which chose to leave Leclerc and Hamilton on track. Vasseur refuses to see this as a mistake.
“There are always post-race strategists, and there is always a guy to tell us after the fact that it was obvious there was going to be a Safety Car 12 laps later” he quipped to Canal+.
According to him, the lifespan of the hard tires took everyone by surprise: “Mercedes thought they would make another stop, and we were all surprised by the tire wear because we could have done 350 laps with them. From there, they were able to exploit this advantage; we had planned to stop during the second Safety Car but they closed the pits.”
A positive sporting result… but work remains to be done
Despite a still significant gap to Mercedes, the French director is satisfied with the points collected and the race performance.
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“Mercedes is faster than us in all conditions, qualifying and race. We’re having a pretty good race today, we need to progress because the gap was significant, and we have a huge list of things to improve on the car, the team, the understanding of the regulations.”
Vasseur insists on the need to learn from the weekend to progress quickly: “We shouldn’t have too many regrets about the race, but rather tell ourselves that it’s a good start and we can see better where we need to progress. Until now, everyone was hiding their hand and it was difficult to have a good vision of Mercedes’ performance; now we see better.”
No deadline to catch Mercedes
For Vasseur, there is no need to set a schedule to return to Mercedes’ level: “There is no deadline because in our business, when you think you’re doing everything right, we’re dead. You have to want to progress.”
Upgrades are already planned for the SF-26, notably the return of the “Macarena” rear wing capable of opening on itself.
“In China it will be difficult because it’s only a week later, but yes, there are upgrades coming soon” concludes Vasseur.