Team principal Fred Vasseur has opened up about Charles Leclerc’s Lap 6 collision, the damage Lewis Hamilton sustained, the impact these incidents had on Ferrari’s momentum in the Constructors’ Championship, and the SF-25’s pace during the weekend following their unfortunate double DNF at the F1 São Paulo GP on Sunday.
After a P7 finish in the Sprint race, Hamilton failed to make it to the final segment of Grand Prix qualifying. His best run in Q2 left him to start the race from P13 on the grid.
The first-lap mayhem resulted in Carlos Sainz making contact with Hamilton’s rear wheel, and the Brit dropped down the order. Unfortunately, the 40-year-old then misjudged an overtake and ran into the back of Franco Colapinto’s Alpine.
Along with a trip to the pits to have the damaged front wing changed, Hamilton also endured lasting damage to the floor. Adding insult to injury, the stewards slapped him with a five-second time penalty for causing a collision with the Argentinian driver. Ferrari eventually instructed the 105-time race winner to box and retire the car after 37 laps.
On the other side of the garage, Leclerc arguably suffered a worse fate in the race after finding himself up in third place with a stellar lap on Saturday.
The Lap 6 restart saw Leclerc move around the outside of Antonelli and Piastri into second place. However, the battling pair collided, and the Mercedes clobbered the Ferrari. Losing a tyre ultimately forced the Monégasque to retire his car.
Owing to the double retirement, Ferrari have now dropped 36 points behind Mercedes and four points behind Red Bull in the Constructors’ standings with just three rounds to go.
How Ferrari received “double penalty” at Interlagos
Speaking in a print media session after the race, Fred Vasseur reflected on the incident that wiped Leclerc out and the major blow it has dealt to Ferrari’s ambitions to secure second in the Constructors’ Championship.
Stating that a podium finish at the F1 São Paulo GP was on the cards with Leclerc, Vasseur lamented how the Ferrari driver became an inadvertent victim despite giving Piastri and Antonelli a wide berth at the Safety Car restart. He also added that he didn’t care to determine who was to blame for the incident.
Moreover, Vasseur elaborated on how Leclerc’s retirement from P2 allowed Mercedes and Red Bull to capitalise on their misfortune and leapfrog Ferrari in the Constructors’ standings.
“It’s a tough weekend, at least a tough Sunday.
“I had the feeling that with Charles [Leclerc], we were in a good place, that he had a good start, a good restart, that he took margin on the kerb, and we are paying the full price of the crash between Antonelli and Piastri.
“I don’t care about who is at fault between Piastri and Antonelli. But for sure, it was not Charles.
“And it’s tough because in this fight, you can’t give up points. When you are giving up points, you are giving points also to the others. It’s a double penalty, and in our case, it’s very harsh.”
Vasseur discusses Hamilton’s damage and eventual retirement
In terms of the damage Hamilton had sustained on the opening lap of the F1 São Paulo GP after separate collisions with Sainz and Colapinto, Fred Vasseur couldn’t specify which incident resulted in the significant loss of downforce.
Noting how the Brit had dropped down the order, the Frenchman referred to Max Verstappen’s inspiring recovery drive from the pit lane to P3 and claimed that Ferrari would’ve managed to bag a decent haul of points without two race-ending events.
“We lost a huge amount of downforce. We still don’t know if it was from the crash of Sainz or from the crash of the front wing under the floor, but perhaps both of them.
“Yeah, but after 200 metres, when you are P20… If you have a look at what Max [Verstappen] did today, with decent pace, I think we can come back and you can score good points, but two crashes is too much.”
Asked to shed some light on Hamilton’s pointed radio exchanges with his race engineer regarding his impending retirement at Interlagos, Vasseur clarified that the damage was too severe to continue and that they merely wanted to preserve the power unit once the 40-year-old had served his penalty.
“When you are last and you are missing 35 points or 40 points of downforce on the car, I’m not sure that it makes sense to damage the engine. So we serve the penalty and we stop the car.”
How Ferrari had nearly turned their weekend around
With regard to Leclerc claiming the second row on Saturday and whether they were just unable to find the sweet spot on Friday, Fred Vasseur explained that their exclusive use of the hard compound tyres during free practice had made it challenging for them to unlock their one-lap pace in Sprint qualifying.
Touching on how Red Bull had encountered similar struggles over the course of the São Paulo GP weekend, Vasseur maintained that the SF-25’s pace was reasonable in clean air during the Sprint race and Grand Prix qualifying.
Nonetheless, the 57-year-old acknowledged that they had no positives to take away and added that it was pointless to speculate where Ferrari really were in the pecking order since both drivers had retired on Sunday.
“Yes, I think we struggled. In FP1, we did only one stint with one set of tyres, with the hard. Perhaps the step was huge for the [Sprint] quali. I think we were the only ones with Red Bull to do it. We all struggled a little bit in quali.
“But from the Sprint race, the pace was back. The pace was decent in the Sprint race. We were blocked by Alonso in the first part of the race. But then when we had clean air, it was okay. And the [GP] quali went well.
“Honestly, in terms of pure performance, it’s difficult to say something like this when you leave Brazil with a double zero. But I can’t say it was a good weekend.”
