Formula 1 News: Vasseur plays down another poor Ferrari weekend
(GMM) Ferrari’s ongoing sluggish form has triggered a new wave of criticism in Italy, with the team enduring another bruising weekend in Singapore.
Sky Italia’s Leo Turrini summed up the mood bluntly: “Zero prospects and zero titles.”
Lewis Hamilton has obviously endured a harder transition to life in red than anyone expected. “I felt good in the car all weekend,” he said after qualifying P6, one place ahead of Charles Leclerc.
“I thought, perhaps wrongly, that we’d be able to fight for the top spots. Then the way the program is run, the waiting times in the pitlane, using a tire and coming back in – these things don’t allow us to optimize the session.
“We need to work on it with the team, discuss it calmly. Everyone is doing their best, but we also need to listen to what the others are doing.”
Hamilton pointed to Mercedes’ approach after his former teammate George Russell claimed pole. “If you look at Mercedes, they were the first out and didn’t lose any tire temperature,” he noted.
Former world champion Jenson Button told Sky that Ferrari’s internal pressure is showing. “You can’t be afraid of failure, but that’s exactly how I feel it’s going at Ferrari,” he said.
“I think everyone thinks they can easily be thrown out. That’s not a good feeling.”
Leclerc again denied being disillusioned, but frustration was clear after another poor weekend. “When a team like Mercedes, which usually struggles on tracks like these, puts it on pole, we have no excuses,” he said. “We have to do better.
“I don’t know what else to say,” he said, having used an expletive to describe how bad Singapore had been for him.
Team boss Frederic Vasseur conceded that Mercedes has moved ahead. “Yes, it’s true for Red Bull, it’s true for McLaren, it’s true for us,” he said. “I think Mercedes is improving.
“They struggled a lot yesterday, but today they were impressive, which means they’ve made a huge step forward compared to everyone else, not just us.”
He admitted Ferrari’s 2025 car remains a handful. “No, it’s all very much on the limit. It’s not an easy car to drive,” he said.
Responding to Hamilton’s tire preparation complaint, Vasseur said: “It’s not easy to find the right approach on the preparation lap for the tires, and maybe then if you have good conditions at the beginning of the lap and not at the end, it’s all very much on the limit.
“But I want to take the positives from the weekend. We were there on Friday morning; we were there in Q1, and we have to continue to develop, to have this approach. We have to keep pushing and be convinced that we can do it.”