Vasseur, first joy as a Ferrari driver
Frederic Vasseur has a smile on his face, and it cannot be otherwise. He has just achieved his first success as captain of the Ferrari wall: a victory built throughout the weekend, starting from the free practices that gave confidence to the team and the drivers, passing from Carlos Sainz’s pole position and a strategy that proved to be impeccable . In fact, Ferrari put the Spaniard and Charles Leclerc in a position to lead the race from the first corner. He put the rest Smooth Operator with a shrewd strategy at the end, where head, coolness and above all attributes were needed to let Lando Norris get closer and allow him to defend himself from the onrushing Mercedes. It’s normal for Vasseur to pamper Sainz after such a tactical masterpiece.
Vasseur’s words
“It’s a wonderful emotion, which comes after a difficult first part of the season, but the team reacted very well and I’m more than happy with this victory. It is a success that comes immediately after Monza, which had already been a great moment for the team with the pole and the final result. Today was a rather unexpected outcome, but I am more than satisfied with everyone who did an excellent job in the factory and on the track: Carlos was exceptional in his management today, thanks to him and the team. He had the management of the race totally under control, not just the tyres: he understood very quickly that to keep Norris in second position he had to give him the DRS, and he did so for the last 10 laps, when we were at risk due to Russell’s comeback and Hamilton. It was the best choice on his part“, these are the words of the Frenchman a Sky Sports F1.
“The plan was to put the two cars in front at the start of the race, that’s why we started on the softs with Charles, and the start went very well. Then unfortunately there was the Safety Car and Charles found traffic when he rejoined, losing positions. We knew we would have to do 40 laps on the hard tires, so the most important aspect was management rather than advantage: Carlos managed very well throughout the race. We knew that Mercedes had one set of averages more than us and that we would be at risk in the event of a Safety Car or a Virtual Safety Car, as then happened. The pace, however, was enough to keep them behind: not by a large margin, but enough“.
“If we look at the first part of the season we did better on the high-speed tracks like Canada, Spa, Monza and Austria, while we suffered more on the low-speed tracks, and Singapore is not among the fastest tracks. Here tire management and temperature matter much more, and from this point of view we did an excellent job. What has helped the team a lot is that Carlos is doing better since Monza starting from FP1, the two drivers then have a spirit of emulation which is very positive for us. We’ve made a couple of steps forward: Zandvoort it was good in terms of understanding the car and we made too little improvement, but we shouldn’t draw conclusions now. Today we did not become world champions, we just took a step forward. We must enjoy the victory because we do this work to win, it is our motivation and our goal, but next week we start again from scratch: Suzuka will be another weekend“.
#Singapore #Vasseur #Sainz #Suzuka #start