Ferrari: Leclerc withdrawal, Vasseur still can’t explain it

Ferrari team principal: “The project is not wrong, we need to work on it”

Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur in Motorsport tries to pick up the pieces after a nightmarish first weekend in the Formula 1 World Championship.

First and foremost is the surprising retirement of Charles Leclerc: “Honestly, we still don’t know what happened. A few hours before the race there was a problem and we changed those components, but it’s too early to give a detailed answer. We never expected to have such a problem. Today was the first time we ran into an unforeseen problem, we covered 6/7000 kilometers in testing and previously the power unit had run on the dyno without any problems.”

Vasseur however insisted on the goodness of the project, “The project is not wrong, we have to work on it. Perhaps the Sakhir track highlighted our weaknesses, but now we know what to work on. Some positives also emerged, being able to be at their level in qualifying was good news, and it was also good news to see Charles able to stay in range in the first stint of the race. Then we all saw that Red Bull was able to cope with the second stint on soft tires, while for us it was necessary to switch to hard tires, and part of the gap incurred I think was also related to this aspect.”