Ferrari endured all-through in F1 Qatar GP weekend as both Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton struggled, which is likely due to tyre pressures.
It just wasn’t the weekend for Ferrari in F1 Qatar GP as they struggled all-through to show up any respectable fight. The performance level was similar to a lower midfield team in a disastrous show. While Leclerc could fight in the lower rags of points, Hamilton was never close.
The sprint gave nothing and the main grand prix was limited due to strategy situation. Leclerc could do nothing as there was no pace to use and any amount of trying led to mishaps. It was one of the worst race weekends that he had in his career, with Hamilton fairing no better.
The Brit felt better in the grand prix and had the strategy to gain places but safety car ruined any chances. Team boss Vasseur linked their troubles to tyre pressures and the conditions. They couldn’t get their setup right in accordance with the pressures and conditions in Qatar.
The performance showed how out-developed Ferrari has been during the course of the year after they decided to stop aero development in April itself. Vasseur still found positives after they managed to gel well despite the weekend being so hard for everyone involved.
Race –
Hamilton: “Not particularly. I had a good first lap and after that it was pretty dull. I think it was probably the same for everyone. Like, it’s just a track, I mean, I think, being critical, like if you look, when I was in driver’s briefing, for example, I asked them the question, like, ‘Why have you made…why have you…you’ve seen last year, there was no overtaking, why have you not, for example, increased the DRS zone?’ And they’re like, ‘Oh, hmm, hadn’t thought of that’. I’m like, ‘What are you doing?’ Then the pit lane is 26 seconds. If you go to the end of the pit lane, there’s a period at…there’s a long space that’s just unnecessary to be at the pit lane, so you can pull that earlier. It starts super early, so you could squeeze it down to be shorter. We’ve got these 25-lap maximum on those tyres, so I mean, it’s one of the worst races. It’s probably the worst race for us to go to, when you can’t overtake. And so beautiful place and really well hosted, but they’ve got to come up with some other solution, because that…you hopefully write how bad that race was probably to watch.
“I imagine it was pretty bad to watch. And then on the other side for us, I think it really highlighted just how developed everybody else is and how undeveloped we are at this point of the year in keeping up with. I was nearly getting overtaken by the Stake car and I couldn’t keep up with the Williams. And the Williams came third. So, I mean, they’ve, they’ve done a great job. I mean, I can’t remember another…I’m sure there’s been other bad races here. But definitely one of the worst Grand Prixs in that respect because of everyone’s just stopping the same time and there’s no flexibility. And then on top of that, you can’t overtake. And it’s so fast, the track. It’s a phenomenal track to drive and it’s very, very fast, but it’s just unfortunately like Monaco.”
Leclerc: “Yeah, I had no confidence in the car, had no pace in the car, had nothing in the car. So it’s just…I’m quite glad the weekend is over, to be honest. It was a very frustrating race from the very first lap to the very last lap. Again, after what happened yesterday in the first lap, I had no confidence and I didn’t know what was going to happen with the car in the first few laps. But there’s not been one lap where we’ve been competitive over the weekend, so it’s been very frustrating. Yeah, yeah. But not only in the race.
“In the race maybe a tiny bit easier, but the pace was not there. But in qualifying it was unbelievably difficult. With track limits, I mean, I don’t know. I was obviously pushing for us to check because then when it’s up to the last centimeters, it’s impossible to see in the car. But I definitely could see he was on the limit, so I asked the team to check. Whether it’s a penalty or not…I think there was one or two times that he was battling as well, so these ones sometimes count as a track limit, but I don’t think that’s completely fair, but yeah.”
Vasseur: “I think that this weekend, we struggled a lot with the setup, and probably also linked to the prescription of the tyre pressure. And we struggled from lap one to the last lap of the race. I think it was probably a bit better today, but marginally. But it’s part of the explanation. But the other part, the main part of the situation of this weekend, is linked to the setup from lap one.
“We were in a tough situation. We have to try to understand what we did wrong this weekend. From my understanding so far, it’s linked to the tyre pressure, the prescription, that we were a bit like on a balloon all the weekend. And we struggled to deal with it. But it’s the same for everybody. It means that we did a worse job than the others.”
Strategy, double stack –
Hamilton: “It’s terrible [with double stacking]. It’s like safety car came out the worst time for me obviously, because I’d started on the soft. I was planning on stopping on Lap 10, try to undercut the cars ahead of me but there’s no deg on these tyres, so there’s no undercut, probably very little undercut, no overcut. So, yeah, in double stacking, I lost, like, I think two or three places I lost on the safety car.”
Title scenes –
Hamilton: “So Oscar’s how far behind? How is Max 12 behind now? Max won? Oh shoot, I didn’t know. I had no idea, holysh*t. Wow. I didn’t know that. No, no, I thought Piastri won. I don’t know. I didn’t see it. Lando was fourth, where’s Piastri? Second. Yeah. I mean, that would be helpful [to have bigger TVs]. Like, I couldn’t see the race. I mean, that’s exciting. So Oscar’s third now? Ohh well, then it goes right to the last…to the wire. We all know Max does a great job. Um, I think he’s got a phenomenal team behind him. There’s no denying they’ve had the best car, really, over the last four years, maybe less so at the beginning of this year, but they somehow came back and he’s obviously got a great car, but he does an amazing job with it, so can’t fault him.”
Leclerc: “It’s a tough one. It’s a tough one. I think anything can happen when it’s that little points in between. I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s probably going to be between Lando and Max, but anything can happen. I mean, especially with the tension that there will be, incidents can play a huge part into it and they’re all fighting for positions, so at least…Yeah, it’s been a very boring weekend for me, but I could follow on the screen a little bit of that and was trying to do the math in my head. And at least that was the most exciting part of my race. Apart from that, it was very boring. And yeah, I hope we have an exciting last race in Abu Dhabi.”
Driver frustration –
Vasseur: “Yeah, but honestly, it was…I can’t say that it was positive. The collaboration and the briefing and so was positive. And we were all pushing in the same direction. Now, I can understand their frustration. And trust me, if you ask me the question when I’m on the pit wall at the end of the session, I think I would have replied with probably the same words. And I understand their frustration in the TV pen. Now, the most important is when they are back into the garage with the mechanics, the engineers, to try to find some action. And we tried this weekend, but I think…we had the issue, it’s not a secret, with the power steering at the beginning of the weekend. And this, I think…it’s probably part of the issue that we had on the setup.
“And then you go in quali, you go in the sprint race, and you can’t change between the two. And we made big changes. I think it was okay-ish, perhaps, today. But we went too far away when the others are fine-tuning. But if you start miles away, you are…and on the top today, if you do a step back by two tenths, you are within ten positions that I think it was Q1 or Q2. Yesterday, when you had two tenths and a half between P5 and P16, if you are out of the window, for sure, that you lose tons of position. And on a track like this, when you have zero deg, it’s not easy to overtake with the layout of the track, zero deg. And on the top, you will pause to stop that target to come back.”
Here’s Lewis Hamilton on no regrets
