Vasseur reveals area where Ferrari ‘failed massively’ in Canada

Fred Vasseur believes Ferrari “failed massively” in Canada after failing to execute a clean weekend, despite his drivers both finishing in the points in Montreal.

Charles Leclerc came home fifth and Lewis Hamilton sixth, both inheriting a position thanks to the late retirement of Lando Norris. But Ferrari were not on the pace of Mercedes, Red Bull or McLaren – and that wasn’t purely down to the car.

Leclerc crashed on Friday in Free Practice 1, which cost him the entirety of FP2 as well.

There were also question marks over the tyre strategy in Qualifying, with Ferrari focusing on using the C6 soft while Mercedes and Red Bull used the medium to good effect. Those questions intensified during the race, with Leclerc querying the decision to put him onto a two-stop strategy.

And Ferrari's cause was not helped by Hamilton picking up floor damage after hitting an animal.

“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.

“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.

“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].”

Vasseur added that, with the margins so small in 2025, executing the perfect weekend matters almost more than car set-up or any upgrades a team might bring.

“Honestly, I'm not sure that the characteristic of the car is the main issue today. 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.”

Vasseur hinted that Ferrari would have some small upgrades in Austria – but was keen to stress that sharpening up the operation across the whole weekend would have far bigger an impact than any upgrades.

“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.

Ferrari have slipped back to third in the Teams’ Championship, 16 points behind Mercedes.