Team principal Fred Vasseur admitted Ferrari paid the price for a lack of outright pace during the 2026 F1 Austrian GP, explaining how the team failed to convert a promising qualifying result to a podium finish.
After a strong start to his race—including a battle with Red Bull’s Max Verstappen—Hamilton ultimately finished fifth, while Leclerc crossed the line in eighth, with Vasseur acknowledging the team simply did not have the speed to match its closest rivals.
“I think we are all on the edge in this situation, and if you don’t have the pace, you overpush, you take some risk on the strategy, and when it’s not paying off, you have to do the addition of the deficit, and you pay the bill at the end,” Vasseur told the media after the 2026 Austrian GP.
“That’s what happened today for us. We didn’t have the pace to fight with the Mercedes and Max [Verstappen], and we overpushed the first couple of laps. We had to change the strategy, and everything went in the wrong direction, but it’s a good lesson.”
Overheating tyres and dirty air hampered Ferrari’s race
Leclerc fared even worse than Hamilton at the Red Bull Ring, lacking pace to challenge the frontrunners. After a late stop to switch from hards to softs, he ultimately finished the race down in eighth. The result saw him drop to P6 in the drivers’ standings, trailing his teammate by 46 points.
Asked about Leclerc’s apparent struggles during his late-race stint, Vasseur admitted, “I don’t remember the set.”
He added: “It was overheating, and depending on where you are on track in the fight, you have to take more or less care of the drivers.”
The Ferrari team principal explained that the squad arrived at the Austrian GP hoping to replicate the clean-air advantage it had enjoyed in Spain, where Hamilton had spent much of the race with uninterrupted airflow and stronger tyre management, which allowed him to take an emphatic win.
“I think the target was to be in clean air today, a bit like last week in Barcelona, and it paid off for Lewis last week because we were able to do 80% of the race in clean air,” he said.
“This weekend it was not the case at all.”
Ferrari determined to learn from Austria setback
Vasseur insisted the team would carefully analyse the entire weekend rather than focus solely on Sunday’s race, suggesting Ferrari’s problems already started on Friday.
“Let’s try to understand exactly what’s happened all the weekend,” Vasseur said.
“We are also paying the price of a poor Friday, that we didn’t do long stints or not enough. Point taken.”
