By Carlo Platella
Frederic Vasseur does not disappoint, keeping his cool even after a troubled weekend like the one at Silverstone. In the traditional press conference with the press present at the circuit, including Formula Passion, The number one of the Prancing Horse explains the importance of the tests carried out in Great Britain. The Team Principal traces a parallel with last seasonhoping that England can represent the turning point that the Dutch Grand Prix was for 2023.
Leclerc, the reasons for the strategy
The first issue addressed by Vasseur was the reckless strategy adopted with Leclerc, which saw the Monegasque come in well ahead of schedule to fit intermediate tyres, dropping to the back of the group. “We give the pilots information and propose a strategy, but the final call is up to them,” explains the Team Principal. “I will discuss this decision with Charles. It was clearly the wrong call, but at that moment he was ten seconds behind Carlos, knowing that to get back into the fight for the podium he needed to be aggressive. I’m not disappointed, because on the same lap Hamilton and Russell went long in Turn 1. It was close to being a good call. When you are in the leading group, however, you never run these risks, you just copy the others and that’s what Carlos did.”
At Silverstone Leclerc collects his third zero in four races, as well as his second consecutive mistake in qualifying after the one in Austria. However, Vasseur calls for calm: “In the last races the car has not been easy to drive and we asked a lot of the drivers. Charles had the new package on Friday, then FP3 on Saturday was wet and he went into qualifying with the old one. He was also going well and was even faster than Russell before the mistake at turn 16”.
Clearer ideas
On the performance front, Silverstone confirmed the shortcomings of the SF-24, undriveable in the high-speed corners with the updated Barcelona version and lacking pace with the previous Imola package. However, the tests carried out on Friday helped to develop a better understanding of the latest updates: “I think that we took a step forward this weekendat least from a technical point of view. This evening we have a much clearer idea of the situation than on Friday morning”.
“Last year we were in the same situation at the same point in the season, between Silverstone and Budapest. In Zandvoort we stopped to do a complete scan of the car and from there we made a good comeback, because in the following weeks we were there. The point is that when you have a problem you can’t do tests to understand it. Sometimes you decide to compromise the Friday sessions, sacrificing some time for the weekend thinking about the medium term. We put ourselves in a difficult situation, but we knew that before. We had decided it before the weekend.”
Unpredictable Bouncing
The difficulties encountered with the Barcelona package could not be traced back to correlation problems according to Vasseur: “The correlation in terms of aerodynamic load is ok. But bouncing sometimes comes out of nowhere. and it’s like this for everyone. The phenomenon doesn’t occur in the wind tunnel and it’s not possible to predict whether it will be better or worse with new parts. […] Over the last 16 months all the updates have had a very good correlation with the wind tunnel. We had a problem with these, but it’s not the end of the world.”
In the meantime, the Prancing Horse is working to free the SF-24 from annoying bounces: “The solution is to find a compromise with performance by developing a new package. In the next races we will have to deal with this car, but sooner or later we will have a package with less bouncing”. Meanwhile Vasseur does not rule out the return of the Barcelona team for the next match in Hungary: “Silverstone was the worst track for bouncing with the high-speed corners. We’ll have time to talk about that in Budapest.” In closing, the Team Principal is asked about the future of technical director Enrico Cardile, recently linked to Aston Martin. Initially Vasseur uses the past to refer to the Italian engineer, before correcting himself: “Today Cardile is still the technical director of Ferrari”.
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