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Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur has admitted that the Scuderia needs to “work on our execution” after disappointing Baku weekend with an eighth- and ninth-place finish for Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc.
Despite a promising start for Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc, Ferrari struggled for pace all through the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. The Monegasque started on Pirelli’s medium tyres and pitted early to try and undercut some rivals.
By contrast, Hamilton elected to start on the hards, and with tyre degradation having been minimal, he managed to extend his opening stint. He might have waited for a safety car interruption, which could have provided him with a cheap pit stop, but it did not materialize.
When the Briton pitted, he rejoined the track in P9, displayed a very strong pace on his fresh tyres. He quickly closed in on Leclerc, who let him past, but the seven-time world champion was unable to make any further progress as he was stuck behind the ‘DRS train’ formed by Liam Lawson, Yuki Tsunoda and Lando Norris.
Reflecting on Ferrari’s weekend at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, team boss Fred Vasseur noted: “We cannot be satisfied with eighth and ninth. We started behind Norris and we finished behind him, which is the reality of this track.
“We had an issue with Charles’ engine which we will now investigate and, even if it was marginal, it was enough to prevent him from being able to overtake in a straight line, which explains why we were stuck behind Lawson.
“The main regret is for yesterday, because we had the pace to do a much better job in qualifying and that’s where the weekend got away from us.
“It’s encouraging that the pace was there, but frustrating that we did not capitalise on it because you have two parts of the job: one is pure performance and the other is your execution.”
The Frenchman stressed that he could discover some signs of improvement compared to previous races in terms of outright pace, but he admitted that the Italian team made some mistakes over the weekend which held it back from achievning more at Baku.
“In terms of performance we made a step forward after Spa, but to be P10 and P12 yesterday was not what we expected. Now we need to understand what we could have done better, because we made some mistake, some poor choices. I know Charles is accepting the responsibility for qualifying, but we need to work on our execution to come back stronger.”
F1GP Azerbaijan
