Ferrari boss Frederic Vasseur says his team will head to this weekend's Spanish Grand Prix in Madrid with "all the energy" to bounce back from their "failure" at Monza. There were big expectations for Ferrari at their home event after Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc were quick in Friday practice, only to miss out on the front row in qualifying before a dismal race on Sunday. Hamilton dropped from fourth to 10th after going side by side with Leclerc at the first chicane, going through the gravel at Turn 2, which he was unhappy with.
Then Leclerc had a huge crash on the third lap which wrecked the car and left the Monegasque driver with initial eye issues. Hamilton was up to third at one point in the race but lacked outright pace and finished sixth behind both Mercedes, Red Bull's Max Verstappen and both McLarens. Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player "We will come to Madrid with all the energy that we need to do a good result," said Vasseur.
"It's true that Monza, for us, even if I spend the week to say that it's a normal race, it's not, as you can imagine. With all the Tifosi, we were expecting to give them something else as a big thank you for the support and the enthusiasm that they have. "We all have the feeling to have failed something, but be sure that we will come back much stronger." Ferrari introduced their second and final engine upgrade of the season but were still slower than the Mercedes-powered cars on the straights.
Straight-line speed has been Ferrari's biggest weakness, something which will not be an issue around the new twisty Madrid circuit, and Vasseur says he was "not expecting" to make up the power-unit deficit to Mercedes. "When you have a lack of pure power, then you start to play with deployment, to try to compensate in the straight line," he said. "But if you deploy more somewhere, for sure you will deploy less somewhere else.
Then you are going in the wrong spiral to try to play with this when you are fighting. "Honestly, it's not about deployment. Even McLaren, they were playing a little bit Friday and Saturday morning.
In the end, we are missing pure power." After the first Additional Development and Upgrade Opportunities (ADUO) review earlier this year, Ferrari were deemed to be more than four per cent behind benchmark engine manufacturer Red Bull. It meant Ferrari could make two engine upgrades this year, and also for 2027, when the Scuderia will have a new engine. "The process of the engine is mega long.
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