Fred Vasseur has heard the criticism. He has heard Lewis Hamilton’s frustration, Charles Leclerc’s confusion and the questions surrounding Ferrari’s strategy execution at Zandvoort.
His response? The Ferrari boss insists the situation was considerably more complicated than it looked from the cockpit.
Hamilton and Leclerc both emerged from the Dutch Grand Prix unhappy with aspects of Ferrari’s decision-making, with neither driver securing the podium.
Hamilton ultimately finished fourth, less than a second behind George Russell, while Leclerc was fifth after a strategy call he felt effectively ended his hopes of beating his Mercedes rival to P3.
For Vasseur, however, the apparent confusion was partly the product of an unusually difficult strategic puzzle.
Tyre performance was closely matched across the compounds, while Ferrari was also trying to protect its intentions from rivals. That does not mean the Scuderia got everything right – and Vasseur admits as much – but he believes the criticism needs some context.
“We didn't want to tell him [Hamilton] the strategy at this stage, because we didn't want to disclose to the competitors that we wanted to keep him on track until the end,” said Vasseur.
“If he was able to keep Antonelli behind him, and I think that would have been the right call. And Charles was supposed to pit, and we extended one lap, and that was a kind of confusion, but I'm not worried about this type of thing.
“Everybody will be back in the debriefing, and they will have a clear picture about the race.
“Charles also was a bit frustrated at one stage about the compound, but the compound that I think everybody was a bit lost about the compounds.
Ferrari’s difficult balancing act
The problem was that Ferrari’s attempt to keep its options open created precisely the uncertainty its drivers experienced.
Hamilton was rapidly closing on Leclerc after extending his opening stint and appeared to have a substantial tyre advantage, yet Ferrari hesitated over how best to manage the situation.
The team also floated the possibility of putting Hamilton onto medium tyres, only for the driver to demand a clearer answer over whether that was genuinely the quickest option.
Vasseur believes the unusual competitiveness between the compounds made such decisions particularly difficult.
“The first two, they started with medium on the first start, then they moved to soft, and the difference between the three compounds was very marginal today, and it was difficult to have a clear picture on the strategy,” the Frenchman explained.
“It means that sometimes you have to change the strategy or adapt, because we are trying to learn from the others also, and for them, it's a bit frustrating, but they will understand.”
That explanation will not erase Ferrari’s missed opportunity. Hamilton’s fourth-place finish was close enough to the podium to make every second count, while Leclerc’s race was compromised by a long final stint that could easily have unravelled without the late virtual safety car.
Still, Vasseur is adamant that hindsight inevitably makes strategic decisions look cleaner than they were in the heat of battle.
Vasseur admits it could have been better
The Frenchman did not attempt to claim Ferrari had executed the race perfectly. Instead, he acknowledged that the team would make some choices differently if given the opportunity to run the race again.
“You can always say after the race that you could have been better to do it like this or this,” he added.
“The story is that when Lewis came back on Charles, we were expecting him to pit, and then we had someone in the shadow of the car when we asked him to do one lap more.
“You can't ask him to do one lap more and to swap position in the middle of the straight line; it's not so easy. But still, yeah, if I have a look at the race now, they can do it differently.”
That final admission is perhaps the most important. Vasseur is not claiming Ferrari was blameless; he is arguing that its strategic decisions were made amid an unusually fluid race and with incomplete certainty about tyre behaviour.
Yet the uncomfortable reality remains that both Ferrari drivers left Zandvoort questioning decisions made by the pit wall. Vasseur may have pushed back against the criticism, but his own concession that Ferrari could have handled the race differently ensures the debate over the Scuderia’s execution will not disappear anytime soon.
Read also: Leclerc slams Ferrari strategy call after losing out to Russell
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