Ferrari Team Principal Fred Vasseur offered a blunt assessment of the team’s performance at the 2025 F1 Canadian GP, admitting the Scuderia “failed massively” across the weekend despite both drivers finishing in the points. Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton inherited fifth and sixth respectively following Lando Norris’s late retirement, yet Ferrari never looked capable of challenging for a podium.
Early errors undermine weekend progress
Ferrari’s weekend started on the back foot after Leclerc crashed in Free Practice 1, forcing him to miss the remainder of Friday running. This disrupted his preparation and compounded issues later in the weekend. Vasseur noted that a series of errors—both strategic and operational—ultimately cost the team.
“I think we made too many mistakes collectively from the beginning with the crash in FP1, with the mistake in Quali, with the marmot in the race,” Vasseur explained.
“And at the end the fight is so tight – I’m not speaking about lap time or race time, I’m speaking about that you can change the position for almost nothing from one weekend to another one.”
Indeed, Ferrari found themselves outpaced by Mercedes, Red Bull, and McLaren throughout the weekend. Even Hamilton’s compromised race—due to floor damage from contact with an animal—did not prevent him from finishing ahead of Leclerc.
Strategic missteps raise questions
Ferrari’s approach to Qualifying attracted criticism, as the team opted for the C6 soft compound tyre while rivals Mercedes and Red Bull performed strongly on the medium. The choice proved ineffective, and the team’s race strategy further compounded frustrations. Leclerc questioned the call to place him on a two-stop strategy, which ultimately failed to deliver any tactical advantage.
Vasseur acknowledged that Mercedes’ resurgence came down to more than upgrades—it was about flawless preparation and execution during the 2025 F1 Canadian GP.
“It’s a good lesson also from Mercedes. They were nowhere the last three weekends and they were able to have the two cars on the podium this weekend,” he said.
“I’m not sure that they changed completely the car, it’s more that from the beginning of the weekend, from Lap 1 on Friday morning, they were there, they did a good job in the preparation and so on. And honestly this weekend, for different reasons, the focus was not always there [for us].”
Tyre understanding holds the key
Vasseur downplayed the impact of the car’s characteristics, insisting the key differentiator in modern F1 lies in tyre understanding and management. He underlined the importance of making the right tyre decisions from the very beginning of the weekend—something he felt Ferrari failed to do.
“Honestly, I’m not sure that the characteristic of the car is the main issue today,” Vasseur said. “The main issue is to do a good usage of the tyres first, and to understand the tyres and to choose the good ones for the Quali, and the exercise is quite difficult.”
“I think today that Max [Verstappen] and Mercedes did a better job on the weekend than McLaren and us, but they were also into the choice of the tyres probably from the beginning of the weekend, and this you have to commit from Friday morning almost.”
“Even before the weekend, you have to put everything together in the right place if you want to achieve a good result today, because in the tyre usage and the tyre performance, or what performance you get from the tyres, I think there is much more than between the cars.”
“It doesn’t matter the car, if the team is doing a very good job on the tyres, they will be in front. It’s true this weekend, it was true in Monaco, it was true in Imola, and it is like it is, and it will be like this until the end of the season. But it’s the same for everybody, we have to do a better job.”
Execution more critical than upgrades
Looking ahead to Austria, Vasseur hinted that Ferrari would bring some upgrades, but stressed that improvements in operational discipline would yield far greater rewards than new parts.
“If we want to achieve, if we want to start from the first rows and to have a clean weekend as [in] Monaco, we need to do a very smooth weekend in terms of execution, and it’s where we failed massively in Canada,” he concluded.
As a result of their troubled weekend, Ferrari now sit third in the Constructors’ Championship, 16 points behind Mercedes. With the margins in 2025 proving smaller than ever, Vasseur’s message was clear: performance gains must come from execution, not excuses.
