Fred Vasseur believes Ferrari was able to match Aston Martin and Mercedes for race pace in the Canadian Grand Prix in a sign of progress from recent rounds.
Charles Leclerc was eight seconds behind Fernando Alonso when he made his one and only pit stop with 31 laps remaining on Sunday and Alonso came in two laps later, with both drivers fitting hard tires. The gap was nine seconds at the checkered flag, and Vasseur said it shows Ferrari has the performance to fight with Aston Martin and Mercedes, but was hampered by its qualifying issues.
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“At least we did the last stint with the same tires as Alonso, I think for almost the same number of laps, and it was plus or minus one second over 30 laps,” Vasseur said. “For sure you can always say that (Max) Verstappen was not flat-out, but I don’t think that (he was cruising). Compared to two or three races ago, we finished 10 seconds (behind) and that was almost the gap at the end of lap one.
“For sure, it was a positive Sunday. We also had a good Friday. The Saturday was a bit more difficult, but at the end it was a good Sunday. Now we don’t have to jump to conclusions about the situation of the season after one race – Montreal is a bit different, it’s a lot about curbing, that the track is green… But it’s good that we’re going in the right direction, I hope that it will be also of use in two weeks’ time in Austria.”
Despite the pace that was shown throughout the race, Vasseur says he isn’t going to dwell on what Ferrari could have achieved with a clean weekend.
“I don’t know, and I don’t want to race with ‘if, if, if’,” he said. “It’s like it is, now we have to think about what happened (in qualifying), we’ll have a meeting to discuss about it on Tuesday. But I don’t want to race with ‘if’, because with this kind of attitude, everyone is world champion.”
Vasseur also disputed any notion that Ferrari needed Sunday’s strong result to appease Leclerc, who had complained about the mistakes made in qualifying when he wasn’t listened to regarding tire choice in changeable conditions.
“You can always do a better job, it’s true also that the picture that you have 10 seconds after quali is not always the best one,” he said. “We had a discussion with Charles, we gave him the global picture of the situation, what happened during the situation, and he was much more calm.
“I think the confusion came from the fact that perhaps he didn’t get the global picture of quali, and we probably have to improve some areas, he has to put himself in (the team’s) shoes sometimes. We can’t say we did a good job, I think the pace was mega but we finished 10th and 11th. It means something went wrong.”