Vasseur believes Leclerc's Ferrari 'could have had at least Russell'

Close to the podium, the drivers of the Team seemed so far away. Distanced by a leading trio superior in terms of performance, Charles Leclerc et Lewis Hamilton seem to have secured the best possible result given the pace delivered by the SF-25 on the Sakhir circuit.

Speaking to Canal +, Frédéric Vasseur did not wish to speculate on a possible scenario other than the one that took place, but admitted that the result could still have been maximized. "I'm not Mrs. Irma, no one can know what would have happened. I think we paid the price on the first stint by doing a longer stint than the others. We were then staggered with fresher tires until the end, so yes, I think we could have at least had Russell."

Given the order in which events unfolded, chasing Russell would surely have been easier with other tires than those fitted at the end of the race for Charles Leclerc. With hard tires, the Monegasque experienced the same difficulties as his teammate, or the Dutchman. Max Verstappen earlier in the Grand Prix.

The Safety Car constrained Ferrari's strategy

"The problem was that when the safety car came out there were 24 laps to go and it was too risky to use the soft tyres., explained the Scuderia director to Sky Sport. By starting with the mediums and then moving up, we could have chosen at the end to use the hard or soft tires depending on the degradation. This was the most flexible strategy, because with a lot of degradation, we could have chosen the hards, or the softs in case of low tire wear.

Having been unable to take advantage of this strategic advantage, Frédéric Vasseur wants to be clear about his team's position. "We are where we are and I think it is clear to everyone that McLaren has a head start. In certain conditions, for example in the second stint of the race, we are there. But overall, they are on average 2 or 3 tenths faster than us, maybe a little more in some stints, or a little less in others. The advantage, however, is in that order of magnitude and we are fighting with Mercedes et Red Bull"

Regarding the possibility of changing this fixed hierarchy at a given moment, the Frenchman doesn't adopt a very different approach from Lewis Hamilton, not expecting a sudden leap in performance from the Scuderia. According to them, the need is deeper.

"We have to calm expectations, because we are talking about a few hundredths of a second, the key factor today for the performance of the whole paddock is the tires and their management. For Frédéric Vasseur, no achievement is truly permitted, because Jeddah is almost the opposite of Bahrain, because it's a circuit where you can do ten qualifying laps on the same set of tires."

In this context, the two Ferrari drivers will have to try to maximize their position in qualifying, in which case the potential lack of deterioration announced by their team principal could well force them to find themselves stuck in the pack again in Saudi Arabia.

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