Ferrari had a mixed weekend in Bahrain. Charles Leclerc converted a second place on the grid to a fourth place at the finish, whereas Lewis Hamilton had fight back to P5 after a poor qualifying result. Team principle Fred Vasseur wasn’t to harsh on Hamilton after the Bahrain GP though.
“I understand the frustration yesterday evening, because if you have a look from FP1, FP2, FP3, Q1, Q2, he was into the tenths plus or minus with Charles. Then you arrive to Q3, the first lap is deleted and the second one he made a mistake. And then you pay the price, because the grid is made not on the average but on the last lap.
“For sure that it’s a bit of frustration for him, but for us also. And as you said, he had a very strong recovery today, solid race that he came back [to] P5. I think the race time compared to the top two, top three is almost similar.
“That means that for me it was okay today, that he was very strong, consistent. But now with the field that we have, if you miss two or three tenths in quali because you do a mistake, you lose six or seven positions.”
Adaptation to Ferrari takes time
Hamilton has spent 12 seasons at Mercedes, 18 if you count the seasons having driven with a Mercedes engine. Vasseur understands that it is not easy to adapt after having spent more than a decade at another team.
“But you won’t replace 12 years of collaboration in two weeks or in two races,” he explained. “That means that for sure we need to improve, but I think this is true for everybody in the team, in the paddock. That the DNA of our sport is to try to do a better job. And I think it’s good to have Lewis with this mindset [of] ‘It’s OK, I have to improve also myself and to adapt myself to the car.’
“We will work on the car, to adapt the car to Lewis, but he has also to do a step. And I think between us, it’s done in a positive way and a very constructive way.
“Now the fact that he was a bit down yesterday evening, I like it. Because if the guy is coming back P10 and he says, ‘ah, it’s a shame’, [it’s not good].
“For sure he was disappointed because he was much better all the weekend so far.”
Close field makes mistakes hurt more
In the current state of F1, where most of the time the entire field is within 1.5 seconds on Saturdays, a small mistake has huge consequences. Something Vasseur acknowledges hurted Hamilton during qualifying for the Bahrain GP.
“Now we know that it’s happened like this in F1 today, that it was not the case three, four years ago. That when you had five tenths between the teams, because you do a mistake, you lose one position, one row.
“Today you lose five tenths, you can lose six or seven positions. I think Charles was on the first row, but it was three or four hundredths slower, he would have been P6.
“It means that it’s always relative. That we have to stay calm in terms of judgement of the performance, because sometimes for almost nothing you can change a good weekend in a very poor one and vice versa.
“It means that I appreciated the reaction of Lewis yesterday. I did my best to push him a little bit and today he was in a very good shape and very strong shape.”
Vasseur unimpressed by criticism on Hamilton’s performance
Hamilton faced some criticism already for his inconsistent performance at Ferrari during the first four races. The Frenchman teamboss is convinced that will die down as the season progresses.
“But we are Latin,” he says, recognising the ever-present scrutiny from the Italian press. “It means that I was not expecting something different after China that [they] were speaking about the prize-giving ceremony, [and] after China race two that it was a disaster.
“It means that in terms of management I think we have to take it a bit easy, to calm down. We have up and down as everybody. The issue is probably that the ups for us are a bit higher and the downs are a bit lower.
“It means that if we want to keep a consistent approach, and we did it very well the last two years, we have to stay calm to try to improve hundredths of seconds by hundredths of seconds. But I’m convinced that we’ll do the same job as we did the last two years.”
