Ferrari saw its strategy get complicated at the Formula 1 Dutch GP, after an apparently simple decision changed the race scenario. Scuderia boss Fred Vasseur acknowledged that the execution could have been better, but defended the choices made by the pit wall personnel.
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The problem involved Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc, who were on different strategies and ended up losing time while Hamilton remained behind his teammate, even though he was faster. The Brit finished the race less than a second behind George Russell and considered that the lost time had been decisive for the podium fight.
According to Vasseur, Ferrari expected Hamilton to pit when he approached Leclerc again. However, the team identified traffic near the car and asked the British driver to stay on track for one more lap, which made an immediate position swap difficult: “You can always say after the race that it would have been better to do it on lap 46. The story is that when Lewis caught Charles, we expected him to stop, but there was someone close and we asked him to do one more lap,” he said.
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The Ferrari boss admitted that the main failure was in communication with Hamilton, and not necessarily in the strategic decision itself: “The main problem is that we didn’t tell Lewis that we expected him to go to the end. It wasn’t a matter of pushing,” Vasseur said, highlighting that the assessment of the best choice becomes simpler after the race ends.
Leclerc also expressed doubts about the strategy management, especially regarding his last stop. The Monegasque considered that stopping a few laps after Russell practically eliminated his chances of regaining position, assessing that there was still enough life in the tires to stay longer on track. At the same time, he pointed to the moment of the Virtual Safety Car and Ferrari’s poor performance in qualifying as factors that had already put the team in an unfavorable situation.
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