{"id":111434,"date":"2025-05-18T10:18:10","date_gmt":"2025-05-18T10:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/111434\/"},"modified":"2025-05-18T10:18:10","modified_gmt":"2025-05-18T10:18:10","slug":"ferrari-boss-sets-record-straight-in-damning-admission-with-hamilton-left-devastated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/111434\/","title":{"rendered":"Ferrari boss sets record straight in damning admission with Hamilton left ‘devastated’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hitting arguably the lowest point in Ferrari\u2019s season as neither Lewis Hamilton nor Charles Leclerc progressed to Q3 at Imola, the first of Ferrari\u2019s home circuits, Fred Vasseur has defended the design team led by Loic Serra.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Instead, he puts the SF-25\u2019s weaknesses down to decisions made prior to Serra\u2019s arrival in October last year, although he stopped short of blaming former technical director Enrico Cardile.<\/p>\n

Ferrari boss: \u2018We probably made mistakes with the car\u2019<\/p>\n

In a season in which the Ferrari team-mates are still chasing a first Grand Prix win, Hamilton even a first Grand Prix podium, Ferrari<\/a> suffered an embarrassing double Q2 elimination in qualifying for the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Neither Leclerc nor Hamilton had the pace to progress, bumped out of qualifying as former Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz, now with Williams, topped the timesheet in Q2.<\/p>\n

\u201cDevastated. I feel just gutted, I guess,\u201d Hamilton told the media, including PlanetF1.com, of his first qualifying as a Ferrari driver on Italian soil<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt like that car [was good]. The setup was just right, the brakes was working, everything was kind of in place \u2013 and we just can\u2019t go quicker.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leclerc also issued a damning verdict on the SF-25\u2019s performance, telling Sky F1: \u201cYou can always do a little bit more with a lap and improve quite a few things, but we are just P-nowhere at the moment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s not enough performance in the car. There\u2019s just not the potential that we will hope inside this car at the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Go deeper: Ferrari\u2019s troubles in Imola qualifying laid bare<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udc49 Where it all went wrong for Ferrari in Imola qualifying<\/a><\/p>\n

\ud83d\udc49 Winners and losers from the 2025 Emilia Romagna Grand Prix qualifying<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s not the first time the team-mates have rued a lack of speed and even a lack of potential.<\/p>\n

And it begs the question, where does the blame lie?<\/p>\n

While some have pointed fingers at Ferrari\u2019s new technical director Serra, who joined the team from Mercedes, Vasseur has defended him as \u201c90 per cent\u201d of the car was defined before Serra joined the team in October last year.<\/p>\n

That would turn the focus, and the blame game, to former Ferrari tech boss Cardile, although he left in July and left a vacuum that Ferrari announced Vasseur would oversee in the interim.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Loic arrived in Maranello six months ago, the current car was already defined, let\u2019s say, ninety per cent. Then, of course, it depends on each individual element, but the basic design decisions had already been made,\u201d Vasseur told Marca.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m talking about the weight distribution, the wheelbase, the overall concept, etc. It\u2019s something that affects all teams when the technical leadership changes.\u201d<\/p>\n

But, he added: \u201c95 per cent of the team is the same as the one that participated in the 2023, 2024 and 2025 projects. I am convinced that if a project has problems, it does not mean that the structure does not work.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have great confidence in our team; We know we have to improve, but that\u2019s a constant in motorsport. Even if you\u2019re in first place, you know you have to keep improving; otherwise, you expose yourself to attacks from your rivals.<\/p>\n

\u201cLooking back on this year, we probably made mistakes with the car; we have to do better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ferrari though, won\u2019t abandon the development of the F1 2025 car to focus entirely on 2026 with its all-new technical regulations regulation.<\/p>\n

\u201cOften, at the end of race weekends, we find ourselves with the feeling that we haven\u2019t squeezed the most out of the car, and until we have that feeling I can\u2019t say that I know the exact potential of the project. That\u2019s why I think there are still signs of improvement,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

After six Grands Prix, Ferrari are fourth in the Constructors\u2019 Championship, 152 points down on McLaren, while Leclerc and Hamilton are fifth and seventh in the Drivers\u2019 standings. They trail Oscar Piastri by 78 and 90 points respectively.<\/p>\n

Vasseur is hoping they can add to that tally in Sunday\u2019s Emilia Romagna Grand Prix and given the Tifosi something to celebrate.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt will be up to us to try and see what we can do,\u201d he said. \u201cEven if we had good race pace on Friday, here is not the easiest place to overtake so it will be a challenging afternoon and we will probably have to take some risks, specifically in terms of the strategy.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will focus on that now and try and do our best for the Tifosi.<\/p>\n

Read next: F1 starting grid: What is the grid order for the 2025 Emilia Romagna Grand Prix?<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hitting arguably the lowest point in Ferrari\u2019s season as neither Lewis Hamilton nor Charles Leclerc progressed to Q3…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":111435,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[748,393,997,7181,4884,225,12,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-111434","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-ferrari","11":"tag-fred-vasseur","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-home-page","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-northern-ireland","16":"tag-scotland","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom","19":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114528328450710899","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111434"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111434\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}