Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur was confronted with a familiar frustration in Austin last weekend: his team had failed to deliver when it mattered most.
The Scuderia topped all three practice sessions at the Circuit of the Americas, putting Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton in a promising position for qualifying, and for race day.
Yet when Saturday’s grid-defining session reached its decisive Q3 phase, the pair were unable to uphold their early weekend momentum, leaving Leclerc fourth on the grid and Hamilton fifth.
The consequences were clear on Sunday. Leclerc was able to fight his way to second behind Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli, demonstrating the race pace that had made Ferrari look so threatening throughout the weekend.
Hamilton, meanwhile, finished fourth, just a second short of challenging Max Verstappen for the final podium position.
For Vasseur, the missed opportunity was difficult to ignore. Ferrari had possessed the speed to make life considerably harder for its rivals, only to compromise its prospects before the race had even begun.
Two laps that sealed Ferrari’s weekend
Vasseur insisted the SF-26 had performed as expected throughout the event, making the qualifying disappointment all the more difficult to explain.
"The weekend went well and everything is working well as expected on the package,” Vasseur said.
“The issue is that we did all the laps, from the first laps of FP1 to the last lap of the race, in good shape. Except the last two laps of Q3 on both cars, and it's probably where we missed something.”
The problem was not necessarily a lack of outright performance, but Ferrari's inability to extract it when the pressure peaked. That distinction matters little on the starting grid, where a couple of tenths can separate a front-row opportunity from a position buried behind the leading contenders.
It is also a recurring weakness. Ferrari has repeatedly shown encouraging speed in practice this season, only to struggle to translate that promise into its qualifying results.
“I think what is true is that with the cars or the tyres, the window is very narrow, and as soon as you are a bit out, quickly you lose two or three tenths,” he explained. “And today in F1 [in] the top eight, two or three tenths can be a sixth position.”
“It means that you can move from the super result to nowhere for gust of wind, or you slide a little bit too much in the out lap, or you have to slow down, as we had the case in Madrid, you have to slow down a little bit, don't stick to your pace in the out lap, or whatever, the impact is huge.”
Ferrari must learn to put everything together
Vasseur was adamant that the team's underlying performance had not suddenly disappeared when qualifying began. Instead, he pointed towards the fine margins separating a competitive package from a perfectly executed weekend.
“For sure the pace from the beginning when we put the car on track on Friday morning, to the last lap of the race, the pace was there,” the Frenchman said.
"What we have to pay attention is that competitiveness is not just about the package; it's also the fact that sometimes set-up, tyre management, you are in the right spot, and you are doing a good weekend. And sometimes not.
“And if you have the package when you are not in the right spot, you can also have the feeling that it's not working.”
Asked whether Ferrari's tendency to hit the ground running while its rivals improve through the weekend explained the pattern, Vasseur suggested Austin offered a different picture.
“I think at least on this weekend, it was true for everybody,” Vasseur said. “Probably Kimi did a step also, because you can also imagine that he was not on the right spot before, and he put everything together for Q3.
“But I think the other seven cars, except Hadjar, probably the other six cars took a step back. The fastest lap of Charles was in Q2. For sure we didn't do the perfect job in Q3.
Read also: Hamilton rues Ferrari set-up error after understeer nightmare
“That this is true for us, for everybody. But we have to put together all the parameters to try to have a better understanding of the situation. And I think all the teams we are improving step-by-step on this.
“But it's so marginal that sometimes a gust of wind, you are sliding a little bit, you overheat the tyres for details, sometimes you can be out of the spot. If you don't put everything together, you can move from P2 to P6.”
Ferrari's runner-up finish in Austin confirmed that its speed was genuine. But with Leclerc and Hamilton starting fourth and fifth, the team made its own task harder than necessary.
Vasseur's challenge now is to ensure that promising practice sessions translate into qualifying positions worthy of Ferrari's ambitions.
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