Vasseur Responds To Criticism Of Leclerc's Sunday Race Strategy

Thursday, 26 October 2023 at 03:00

Ferrari F1 team principal Frederic Vasseur explained what happened with race strategy for Charles Leclerc during the 2023 United States Grand Prix.

Even though Charles Leclerc got disqualified a few hours after the end of the race at Circuit of the Americas, his wrong race strategy still remains a topic of conversation.

Ferrari made a mistake when the team tried to go for a one-stop strategy (as the only team on the grid) for the Monegasque driver. The team's principal Frederic Vasseur told the media after the race:

"Probably the issue is that we didn’t have a clear picture about this before the race, we were a bit hesitant, and he was a bit hesitant in the first stint, pushing or not pushing. And we made a mistake."

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Alpine driver Pierre Gasly made fun of Ferrari with Leclerc who apparently asked the French driver for the one-stop strategy on the grid ahead of the race. Vasseur said the strategy was not clear before the race from his point of view.

"“It was not very clear before the race, as you can imagine. We had two options. In terms of numbers, it was very, very close. I think where we made the mistake is that we anticipated that the field will be 50-50. And it was not at all.'

The team principal explained it is unimportant to focus on what might have gone differently if Ferrari had gone for a different strategy. The right approach should be to examine why some decisions were made with data available at the time.

“But I think it’s not the right approach, we have to be focused on the mistake, to try to understand why we made the choice, because we were convinced that it was the good one, with the elements that we had at this stage."

Vasseur suggests something similar to what Leclerc indicated after the race - the numbers available to the team during the race did not reflect the reality, and the Ferrari team needs to find out why.