Vasseur rues Ferrari’s mistakes after a tough weekend at Montreal
On the back of a disappointing weekend for the Scuderia, Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur blamed the series of mistakes the Italian outfit made at Montreal for the suboptimal result.
Despite struggling for pace on Friday, Hamilton displayed a strong performance in qualifying. Although he was unable to challenge for pole position, he managed to secure fifth place on the grid, and hoped to be able to fight for a podium finish at Montreal.
The British driver started on the mediums, and managed to stay with championship leader Oscar Piastri in the early stages of the race. However, he accidentally hit a groundhog which meant that he picked up significant floor damage.
As a result of the incident, Hamilton lost pace as the laps went on, though he was able to cross the line sixth come the chequered flag.
His team-mate Charles Leclerc started only from P8 on the grid after a mistake on his final push lap in Q3.
The Monegasque elected to start the 70-lap race on Pirelli’s hards. Although he found himself second after the frontrunners made their first pit stop, Ferrari elected to call him in for a second set of hards despite the fact that his tyres were in a relatively good shape.
Leclerc ultimately did not have the pace to climb back to the top cars, but he gained a place courtesy of the collision between McLaren team-mates Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri to finish fifth at Montreal.
After a disappointing weekend at Montreal, Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur was left to rue the mistakes the Scuderia made over the three days of running at Canada.
"I believe the main issue this weekend is that we made too many mistakes and had too many issues right from FP1, when we lost one car," the Frenchman started his assessment.
“Then came a mistake in qualifying and in the race Lewis lost a good amount of points of downforce early on after unfortunately hitting a small animal that ran onto the track which damaged the front part of the floor.
“If I could replay the weekend I would choose not to have missed FP2 with one car as it meant we were unable to long stint the tyres and that was our main issue today.
“And that’s how you end up P5 and P6. We have to take some positives from the weekend, starting with our pace in quali. Yesterday Charles had the fastest first sector before having to abort the lap and our race pace is not far off the quickest, but when you don’t put everything together you find yourself in traffic.
Signing off with a word for his expectations for the future races, Vasseur said: “I am sure we will get a break soon, we just need a clean weekend. If we put everything together we can do it."
