Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur has praised Ferrari’s much-improved tyre degradation in the 2024 F1 season as a key factor contributing to their good result at the Japanese GP, with Carlos Sainz taking the final place on the podium, just ahead of his team-mate Charles Leclerc in P4.
After a somewhat anonymous qualifying performance compared to their high 2024 standards, with P4 and P8 on the grid for Sainz and Leclerc respectively, the Maranello squad managed to pull of the perfect strategy calls on either side of the garage to maximise their results in Suzuka, finishing third and fourth, only behind the all-conquering Red Bulls of Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez.
The secret to their success was having relatively low tyre degradation and executing two different strategies to their maximum potential – Sainz was on an offset two-stop strategy and Leclerc was one of the few drivers to make a one-stop decisively work.
Speaking to selected media after the race in Japan, Ferrari team boss Federic Vasseur explained how the team will leave Suzuka satisfied with the result, and the huge evolution in tyre degradation compared to their 2023 woes in that area:
“Honestly, I think that everything went very well on Sunday. The strategy was the good one for both cars,” he said. “Tyre management was under control, the pitstop went well, the pace was OK.
“I’m convinced that we need a good Sunday and if we have to change something, it’s more the Saturday that we have to improve than the Sunday. But it was a good job and a good teamwork.
“From the beginning of the season, we are much better on the tyre management and degradation.
“We were able to do the fastest lap in Jeddah and Melbourne. It was almost the case today for one tenth, I think. We did a good step forward in this one.
“We worked a lot on our weaknesses and we improved massively on the tyre management, drivers, strategy, and the team.
“We have some other weaknesses and we have to improve somewhere else if we want to do a better job. But I think [tyre management] is very well under control.”
When asked about the decision to split the strategies for its cars, Vasseur explained how the race situation unfolding dictated the better strategy for each situation, with Leclerc needing to try something different after starting lower down the grid than perhaps it was to be expected:
“I am still convinced that in clean air the optimum was the two-stop, to save track position, to avoid to be into the fight. For Charles, the best one was to do one stop.
“The difference was not mega, but it is depending on the situation and depending on your position in track. It is probably a bit more difficult when you have to do one stop because you have to keep your [tyres] under control and you have all the rotation to push a little bit more. But I think it is difficult.
“Both stints went very well [with Charles]. I think the last stint was something like 30 laps with the hard [tyres]. It was quite ambitious.
“But honestly we had a very low deg and I don’t know if we were able to do 20 laps more, but I don’t think so. But it was still under control and we had to extend a little bit.”
The Frenchman is adamant that Leclerc’s recent qualifying woes as he struggled to match Sainz’s pace will “soon” be put to one side, and downplayed it as not being a “disaster” just because he’s a tenth of a second behind his team-mate despite a compromised qualifying run plan due to his Q1 double run:
“You don’t have to draw a conclusion just based on [qualifying],” he said. “I think where we missed a little bit the weekend with Charles yesterday was the first lap of the Q1, because he didn’t do a big lap this one, and we had to put a second set because we were a little bit at risk.
“And then you go to Q3, you have only one set. And you are a little bit on the back foot, because if I do a mistake, I will be P10. And we didn’t take the right approach on the quali.
“But now I am convinced that Charles is a competitor. He is a good one on the one-lap quali and he will be back soon.
“He is lucid on the fact that he didn’t do a good quali yesterday, that you can’t be happy when your teammate is P4 and you are P8. But overall, we need also to have a deep look on the quali, on the session.
“We missed the Q1, and then we landed at the end only with one set in Q3, and we finished 1 tenth of the second row. It is not a disaster that you are half a second or 6 tenths off. It will be another one next week.”
