Faltering Ferrari facing fresh fallout
There were so many opportunities for alliteration relating to Ferrari’s weekend at the Chinese Grand Prix, but some of them would have landed me in hot water with the FIA given the swearing guidelines that are currently in place.
Still, what a difference 24 hours can make.
Lewis Hamilton’s pole position for the Sprint — and subsequent win — appeared to put the disappointment of Australia into the rear-view mirror for Ferrari, after the team struggled with setup and strategic calls during a challenging opening weekend.
The presence of Hamilton, who it must be said was remarkably restrained after such a messy start, has only served to increase the scrutiny on a team that already faced more intense analysis than most. It has been mentioned many times that one of Fred Vasseur’s biggest strengths has been his ability to block out the noise surrounding Ferrari and stop the team overreacting to either good or bad situations, keeping the Scuderia on a much more even keel. Well, the Ferrari team principal is going to need to lean on all of that and more after Sunday in Shanghai.
Qualifying on Saturday afternoon was a little disappointing after the pace shown in the previous two competitive sessions, but if Ferrari had retained the strong race performance from the Sprint then it would be in position to fight for a podium at least in the grand prix. With Hamilton passing Max Verstappen for fourth at Turn 1, and Charles Leclerc following him through, it all looked so good.
The Chinese GP looked promising for Ferrari off the line, but soon went from bad to worse. Kym Illman/Getty Images
Even the contact between the two drivers that broke Leclerc’s front wing endplate did not appear to be a problem, as Hamilton avoided a puncture and Leclerc still displayed strong pace with a front wing that structurally was remaining intact.
Teams are allowed to replace obviously damaged parts for post-race weight checks, and Ferrari was able to fit a replacement front wing that the FIA stated was 0.2kg heavier than the one that had raced, yet that still wasn’t enough to avoid later controversy.
After Hamilton’s win on Saturday, the mood surrounding Ferrari had been much more buoyant. It looked like it had quickly bounced back from Melbourne and found a direction with its new car, one that would help Hamilton produce strong performances to rival Leclerc.
Yet there appeared to still be plenty to work on even during the race, as multiple radio messages were played out that suggested the two drivers were not totally satisfied with the information they were receiving. If anything, it was Leclerc who appeared the more frustrated, stating he was being given repetitive feedback and retaining the hint of sarcasm that was on display in Australia.
The race was soon slipping away from Ferrari after that strong start. It couldn’t quite put pressure on George Russell ahead, and Hamilton was struggling compared to the Sprint, telling the team he was willing for it to try something different as Leclerc shadowed him closely, and eventually letting his teammate through at Turn 1.
Leclerc’s initial burst of pace once clear of Hamilton soon faded away, and both were powerless to resist Verstappen’s recovery after an anonymous first stint for the Red Bull driver. Hamilton’s two-stop was a gamble worth taking as it ultimately cost him nothing, and the Ferrari was ultimately the fourth-fastest car on the day.
Yet even the disappointment of not having an answer to McLaren, Russell or Verstappen wasn’t going to prove to be enough misery for the Scuderia, as it found two different ways of tripping itself up even further.
In reality, one of those ways had been found prior to the race, with setup to blame for Hamilton’s rearward skid block wearing below the minimum allowed 9mm. A Sprint weekend does put more pressure on teams to get a setup right within smaller windows, but the current format allows lessons to be learned from the race situation on Saturday and changes made as parc ferme re-opens ahead of qualifying.
That wasn’t the case in 2023, when both Hamilton — then at Mercedes — and Leclerc were excluded from the United States Grand Prix, again for plank wear. And when a team has gone through that situation once, it really should have put steps in place to avoid a repeat.
One-stopping Leclerc may have opened the door to his DQ. Ferrari photo
For Leclerc, there are multiple potential reasons why his car was underweight, but much like Russell at Spa-Francorchamps last year, an unexpected one-stop strategy could play a role. Multiple cars pulled off such a strategy, and Leclerc was not alone in being underweight, with Pierre Gasly also disqualified.
Gasly ran the longest stint of anybody to the end of the race with 46 laps on his hard tires, while Leclerc stopped five laps later so had 41 on his. Yet none of the rest of the top five had any weight issues, despite Verstappen, Russell and Oscar Piastri running more laps than Leclerc, and Lando Norris the same number.
Russell’s situation provided all of the teams with a clear warning of a potential side effect of such a strategy. One that has been performing as well as Ferrari in recent years should really have heeded that incident and learned from it, but instead it leaves Shanghai with a double disqualification and stays behind Williams in the constructors’ championship.
“Charles was on a one-stop strategy today and this meant his tire wear was very high, causing the car to be underweight,” a team statement admitted. “With regard to Lewis’ skid wear, we misjudged the consumption by a small margin. There was no intention to gain any advantage.
“We will learn from what happened today and make sure we don’t make the same mistakes again. Clearly it’s not the way we wanted to end our Chinese GP weekend, neither for ourselves, nor for our fans whose support for us is unwavering.”
Early days they might be, but Ferrari has now had multiple different issues over the opening two rounds and they are proving extremely costly. Giving McLaren a 61-point head start in the constructors’ championship, and two fewer races to claw it back across, is not the ideal way to kick-off a season if you want to win titles.
Hamilton was quick — and right — to call out critics for being too quick to judge Ferrari after just one race weekend, using the backdrop of his win in the Sprint to point out it should also not get carried away by one good result. But the opening two rounds have been more reminiscent of the Ferrari prior to Vasseur’s arrival, and the team seems to be getting in its own way a little.
“I don’t feel the pressure,” Hamilton said on Saturday. “I know the Tifosi, I know the fans, I know the team wants to win, and I know it means everything to them. But Rome wasn’t built in one day — one step at a time. We’re not going to get ahead of ourselves. We cannot.
“We’ve got to continue to push, we’ve got to be diligent and just remain focused, stay calm. Most importantly stay calm because these moments get us all excited … It’s a long, long way. It’s a marathon not a sprint, so we’ve just got to take our time.”
But the likes of McLaren, Mercedes and Red Bull will not give the team time to get things right. And Ferrari was meant to be set up to win this year, with even Leclerc admitting during pre-season testing that he felt Hamilton had arrived at the right point in the team’s journey.
The positive momentum from Hamilton’s arrival appears to have disappeared already, and the Sprint win was certainly overshadowed come Sunday evening in China. Vasseur will have been ready for such scrutiny this season, but probably didn’t foresee Ferrari making life so hard for itself.
I wrote on Friday that Hamilton had flipped the script as Ferrari enjoyed a more positive outlook, but the team’s errors flipped it back on Sunday. Over the next few weeks, Vasseur needs to make sure everyone is on the same page.
