Ferrari boss refuses to “finger point” after Lewis Hamilton’s drab Chinese GP

Ferrari’s Formula 1 team principal says he is not going to point the blame at anyone after Lewis Hamilton struggled on a two-stop strategy in the Chinese Grand Prix.

Hamilton thought he'd limped to a P6 finish only to be disqualified after the race.

While Hamilton showed supreme tyre management skills on medium rubber in Saturday’s sprint to take a fine victory, the grand prix on Sunday turned out to be a completely different affair for the seven-time F1 champion.

Despite starting ahead on the grid in fifth, Hamilton was asked to swap positions with teammate Charles Leclerc, who was able to lap faster even with a broken front wing that had been damaged since the beginning of the race.

Ferrari brought Hamilton into the pits for a second time on lap 38 of 56 for a fresh set of hard tyres, costing him track position over Red Bull rival Max Verstappen.

But that strategy choice backfired when the majority of the field decided to switch to a one-stopper, and Hamilton was never able to close the gap back to Verstappen, who later overtook Leclerc to finish fourth.

Vasseur was naturally disappointed with the Briton's result at Shanghai, saying the team needs to collectively do a better job in the coming races.
 
“I don’t want to finger-point someone, or to blame something,” Vasseur said.

“We have to do a better job, also. We have to understand that we all have the same tyres. It’s always on the edge.

“We saw in the race that sometimes Max was struggling, then coming back, then struggling.

“As soon as they are not in the right window, it is much more difficult.”

Pirelli had predicted two stops to be the standard choice around the newly-resurfaced Shanghai International Circuit, especially as this year’s C2 tyre is much softer than what it brought last year on F1’s return to China after a four-year, COVID-induced hiatus.

Due to the sprint weekend format, teams hadn’t completed any running on hard tyres in practice, and as such they were not aware how it would perform on track.

As it turned out, the hard tyre was far more durable than had originally been expected, prompting most teams to change their strategies mid-race.

While Hamilton was the only frontrunner who completed the race on two stops, Vasseur defended Ferrari’s choice on a track where tyre graining caused a lot of problems in the sprint.

“Because the deg, at one point, was important,” he said. “You never know. If everybody has to pit, then it makes sense.

“It was a tough day today. Very strange because on one side of the garage we had damage on the front wing. The pace we had was encouraging, it was good.

“It was more difficult for Lewis. He had good tyre management yesterday but we struggled more with the pace today.

“It is difficult to understand.

“We can take the positive from the race of Charles, and the pace he had with the front wing [damage].”