Ferrari "knew Zandvoort wouldn’t suit us," claims Vasseur
On the back of a double retirement for the Scuderia, Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur admitted that the italian team had expected the Zandvoort circuit to expose the weakness of its car.
Lewis Hamilton showed impressive pace in the early stages of the Dutch Grand Prix, but his race ended early after a crash at Turn 3. On Lap 23 of 72, the Briton put a wheel on the slippery white line amid light drops of rain and lost control of his Ferrari.
While he initially looked to catch his SF25, he ultimately slid into the wall at the exit of Turn 3, and had to park up as his car suffered significant front-end damage.
As for his team-mate Charles Leclerc, he got a great launch off the line to pick off Mercedes rival George Russell. The Monegasque looked strong early on, and tried an undercut strategy to move up the order.
However, when he safety car was deployed for Hamilton's incident at the banked Turn 3, his direct rivals managed to complete a 'cheap' stop. As a result of it, Leclerc lost a position to Russell, albeit he then quickly completed a bold move on Russell that saw him edge into the gravel.
Having completed his second stop, things got difficult for him when he came into Turn 3 only to find Antonelli steaming up the inside. The Italian understeered into the Ferrari, sending Leclerc into the barriers and out of the race.
Assessing Ferrari’s weekend as a whole, team boss Fred Vasseur noted: "Overall, this has been a tough weekend. We had a very poor Friday after which the entire team and the drivers did a good job to recover so that we had decent pace today.
"Unfortunately, Lewis lost control of his car, he went just a little bit wider than the lap before at the same corner and just touched the damp part at the side of the track. As for Charles, Kimi came to apologise and I feel it was just a racing incident, he was a bit too optimistic.
"Before that, Charles had shown good pace, closing on Russell, Hadjar and Verstappen but he had to pass Russell twice because he lost two places with the Safety Car.
"Anyway, we knew Zandvoort wouldn’t suit us and the positive we can take away is that we had very strong pace today, but of course it’s not good to head home with zero points.
Signing off with a word for his expectations for thisweekend'sItalianGrandPrix, the Frenchman noted: "As for next week in Monza, we expect to be in better shape and it will be important to have a much better Friday than we did here."
"It's a very tough outcome for the team because for the championship and even for the approach of Monza it's not the best one. But for sure if we want to do better a job, we have to do a much better Friday.
"For sure it's not the best preparation but on the other hand we don't need to have extra motivation for Monza.
"Everybody will push. What we have to do for sure is a much better Friday to put us in a better shape for the Quali and for the race because when you start behind you have to overtake, you have to take risk."
