Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur said Charles Leclerc was “much more calm” after they explained their reasons for a strategy call he disagreed with during qualifying for the Canadian Grand Prix.
Leclerc failed to make the cut for Q3 on the damp but drying track. After starting the session on intermediate tyres Leclerc told the team he wanted to follow Alexander Albon and others who switched to slicks.
However Ferrari kept Leclerc on track, not wishing to miss the opportunity of setting a lap time as early as possible while the track was drying out. Although Leclerc ended up completing more laps than the vast majority of drivers in Q2, he was not able to get up to speed quickly enough and missed out on making Q3 by 0.189 seconds.
He voiced his annoyance about the situation over his radio and then to media afterwards, saying “I think we are just making our life way too difficult” and that he was “frustrated” by the fact he “had a clear opinion and we decided to do something else.”
Vasseur said Leclerc understood the reason for the team’s decision after speaking to them afterwards. “You can always do a better job, but it’s true also that the picture that you have 10 seconds after the quali is not always the best one,” he said.
“We had a good discussion with Charles after your discussion with him, we gave him the global picture of the situation, what’s happened during the session and he was much more calm.”
“I think the confusion came from the fact that perhaps he didn’t get the global picture of the quali,” Vasseur continued. “So we have probably to improve some area that he has to put himself in our shoes sometimes.”
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Vasseur admitted the team “can’t say that we did a good job” in qualifying. “I think the pace was mega and we finished 10 and 11 [on the grid]. That means that something went wrong.”
However hew defended Ferrari’s strategy, despite Leclerc being “crystal clear” over the radio that he wanted slicks.
“It was not our choice [to switch early for slicks] because at this stage the rain was coming and we wanted to put a lap on the board as soon as possible. If you pit at the end of the lap one to put a set of soft then you have two laps to warm up the tyres and you postpone your first flying lap for five minutes. It was not the strategy at this stage.”
Ferrari is holding a follow-up meeting today to discuss how “to fix” its management of such calls in the future. Leclerc and Carlos Sainz Jnr both gained six places in the race to finish inside the top 10, but Vasseur isn’t considering what might have been had they started higher up.
“I don’t know and I don’t want to race with ‘if, if, if’,” he said. “It is like it is. Now we have to think about what happened [in qualifying].”
“I don’t want to race with ‘if’ because with this kind of attitude, everybody is world champion,” he added.
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2023 Canadian Grand Prix
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