Frederic Vasseur doesn’t want to draw conclusions from F1 Italian GP win especially in a season where eight drivers can win races.
The latest update from Ferrari at Monza seemingly lessened the bouncing issue as the F1 team could extract more from its tyres in the grand prix. But both the drivers and even team boss Vasseur cautioned everyone about the true result of the update.
They reckoned that no judgement can be passed on the basis of a track like Monza. Even though the race pace was good, they were still a bit behind the competition in qualifying terms. “Honestly it’s quite difficult to understand the impact of the upgrade on a track like Monza because we are in a so different configuration compared to the rest of the season that it’s quite difficult to understand,” said Vasseur to media.
“But at the end of the day when you see the quali and you have six cars or seven cars in less than one tenth, every single bit makes the difference that for one hundredth I’m keen to go for it. At the end of the day, we had four cars in two hundredths, I think in qualifying in Monza. And for sure you can say that the upgrade is crucial, but at the end, the pace in the race was more linked to the management, tyre management.
“It’s in quali where you have six, eight cars in one or two tenths that every single upgrade will play a lot. In Zandvoort, I was convinced that Zandvoort was a difficult one for us on the paper for different reasons and I was convinced that the next three events would be probably a bit better. That Monza was better but clearly in Zandvoort we were nine tenths off in quali, in Monza we were one tenth, and I think Baku and Singapore could fit also the car and that’s it,” summed up Vasseur.
The Frenchman remains realistic about the chances and wanted to sway from drawing any conclusion just yet. He feels that anything can happen where there are eight drivers who can win F1 races, something that he hasn’t seen happen in the sport for a long time.
The order not only changes from race-to-race but session-to-session. “I think it would be a huge mistake to try to draw any conclusion or to change the plan,” said Vasseur. “And so as you said, it’s a very long way until Abu Dhabi and that we have something like 415 points on the table, I don’t know. It’s so tight, the fight, honestly.
“I spent a couple of years on the pit wall but it’s the first time that I think in F1 we have this situation where eight drivers can win the race without an accident or a big crash, that four teams are able to win or to be on the podium, and it’s changing from session to session. For me the most impressive in Spa where McLaren top in FP1, Red Bull in FP2, we started on pole and Mercedes won the race.
“I think it is like this almost everywhere, except Lando who dominated in Zandvoort but I think until the end of the season it will be like this and it will be a huge fight. And it’s true that with eight cars, with this kind of competitiveness, one team can do 1-2 and the other one 7-8. I don’t want to speak about DNF and this can make a huge difference in terms of points. Let’s be focused on Baku first and step by step we’ll see.”
Here’s Carlos Sainz on Italian GP podium miss
Here’s Charles Leclerc, Frederic Vasseur on Italian GP win
Here’s link to a F1 Discord channel, join in to interact