Nico Rosberg believes Ferrari`s `clumsy` Canadian Grand Prix weekend epitomized their disappointing season so far.
In Montreal, Ferrari drivers Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton finished fifth and sixth respectively, a result that saw the team drop to third place in the Constructors` Championship behind Mercedes, who achieved an impressive one-three finish.
Despite occasional flashes of strong speed from Ferrari`s SF-25 car, particularly from Leclerc, the weekend was plagued by issues. The Monegasque driver missed the entirety of Friday`s second practice session after crashing in the first. He then made an error on his final qualifying lap just after setting the fastest time in the initial sector.
Lewis Hamilton`s Sunday race was also compromised after his car sustained damage from hitting a groundhog on lap 13.
Reflecting on the Scuderia`s frustrating weekend on the latest edition of The F1 Show, 2016 World Champion Rosberg commented: “We`ve got to remember that Charles Leclerc was quick at times in the race.”
“He was very quick; he was keeping up with the McLarens very nicely. He was quick in qualifying. Some say he could have been top three in qualifying, right up there with the others,” Rosberg added.
Rosberg also pointed to strategic missteps: “I think they also did a wrong tyre choice in qualifying [by not running the medium tyre in Q3].”
He continued: “So a lot of strategy mistakes there because then also in the race they stopped Lewis into a bunch of traffic which lost him loads of race time. They also had a free opportunity to try and a one-stop with Charles. It was a free opportunity but they didn’t try to do it. Behind there was just Lewis and loads of space, there was just nobody there, and they could have taken a shot at it and left him out on that first stint in the first place because he was going strong and they just pulled him in early. He was also a bit annoyed about it because he wanted to stay out longer.”
Rosberg concluded: “So it was a bit of a clumsy weekend from Ferrari.”
“Then also bad luck with the groundhog. So it all came together, which is not good.”
“It`s like the story of their year so far, isn’t it? It just keeps on going like that, it`s a tough one for them,” he remarked.Vasseur Discusses Ferrari`s Errors and Learning from Mercedes` Performance
With Mercedes securing a victory in Montreal, Ferrari is now the only one of F1`s top four teams without a Grand Prix win approaching the halfway point of the 24-race season. Charles Leclerc`s three podium finishes remain their best results on Sundays.
Team Principal Frederic Vasseur – whose position had reportedly been under scrutiny in the Italian media before the weekend – admitted the team simply “made too many mistakes” to finish higher.
However, Vasseur noted that Mercedes` sudden return to form provided a valuable lesson on what is possible.
“We showed moments where we were on the pace,” he said.
“I think we made too many mistakes collectively from the beginning, with the crash in FP1, the mistake in qualy, with the marmot in the race. In the end, the fight is so tight, that you can change the position for almost nothing from one weekend to another one.”
Vasseur viewed Mercedes` performance as instructive: “It`s a good lesson from Mercedes. They were nowhere the last three weekends and they were able to have two cars on the podium this weekend.”
“I`m not sure that they completely changed the car, it`s more that from the beginning of the weekend, from lap one on Friday morning they were there. They did a good job with the preparation. This weekend, for different reasons, the focus was not always there,” he added.
Insisting that the “main issue is to do a good usage of the tyres” for a strong result, Vasseur stated: “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.”
Regarding the decision not to pursue a one-stop strategy with Leclerc, Vasseur explained: “I discussed with Charles after the race. Where he is right is that we had not that much to lose when you are behind the pack and we can take some risk, but it was, for us, a bit too optimistic to do one stint of 50 laps with the hard [tyre] in terms of life first before performance. We were also probably missing some laps during the weekend to estimate it.”
Marcus Prine