Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton disagree over whether Ferrari should have pitted them at the time of first VSC.
The pace was strong, the starts sublime, but yet again it was strategy that proved to be Ferrari’s Achilles heel.
Having run wide in Turn 1, despite a strong start, Hamilton was a spectator as far as the opening phase of today’s race was concerned. Though promoted to second when Mercedes double-stacked its cars under the VSC deployed as a result of Isack Hadjar’s retirement, the seven-time world champion felt his team had missed a trick in not pitting at least one of its drivers.
Though there was doubt over whether the Mercedes pair might need to make a second stop they were able to continue until the end, and despite fresher tyres, after they too eventually pitted, though they closed the gap the Ferrari pair were unable to take the fight to the leaders.
“It was a really great race,” said Hamilton at race end, a far cry from the majority of his 2025 post-race summations. “Seventh to fourth, I think the team did a great job overall and the car was fantastic.
“We’re not obviously where we want to be in terms of pace to Mercedes,” he added, “but I think there’s lots and lots of positives to take away.”
Asked about his questioning of the decision not to pit at least one car under the VSC, he replied: “I don’t have mixed emotions about it. As I said, we got third and fourth, I think ultimately the Mercedes were quicker than us, and that’s probably the only position. The only result is that we were going to have a maximum of third today.
“We’ll go and look and see whether, you know, stopping might be better,” he added. “I definitely thought, when I saw two Mercedes going, one ahead of me, one behind me, I thought we should have come in, or at least one of us should have come in and covered. We’ll have a look and see what we’ve got there.”
In the final laps Hamilton reeled in his teammate, and it appeared he might pass Leclerc on the final lap, and though, for whatever reason, he didn’t, he remains upbeat.
“We’re just going to keep pushing, we’ve got to bring upgrades and keep developing, which I know the team is working hard on to make sure that we’re going to look and see where we’re losing.
“It looks like we’re losing on the straight,” he added, “because I think we’re just as good as them on the cars, but we just need to see. They have something on straight line speeds, and that’s something we need to figure out. But I have no doubts that we can do that.
“I thought the race was really fun to drive,” he grinned. “I thought the car was really, really fun to drive. I watched the cars ahead, there was a good back and forth. So, yeah. So far, so good. It’s a good experience.”
Asked if he thought he missed out by not being pitted under the VSC, Leclerc said: “I don’t think so, but maybe I’m wrong. It looked like these guys maybe had a bit more pace than us today, but maybe not as much as what we saw yesterday. So, that’s a good thing, but I don’t think we could have won,” he admitted.
“I don’t regret it,” he said of the failure to pit. “It was a wanted and conscious choice. Looking from FP1 to now there’s been at every session a car that was stopped, at least one car. We knew that there were very high chances that this was not going to be the only VSC of the race and so we thought that it was better for us to maybe wait for another one, and that’s always a gamble.
“Of course, we didn’t know that this would happen. The reality is we had another VSC after and one which was particularly well placed but unfortunately for this one for us the pit entry was closed and we couldn’t take it.
“So we were a little bit unlucky on that side but it was a conscious choice again and I don’t really regret it.”
Team boss Fred Vasseur insists that it was pace and not strategy that sealed the team’s fate.
“What happened was Mercedes thought they were going to pit again,” he told Canal+, “and we were all surprised by how well the tyres held up, because we could have done 350 laps with those. From then on, they were able to exploit that advantage.
“To be realistic, they were eight-tenths faster than us yesterday,” he continued. “I think at this stage of the race, nobody was expecting to do one stop. We targeted the optimum for us, and the optimum was to extend.
“The issue is not the strategy call, but just the pure pace. The pace of Mercedes was better than us, even when they pitted they were three, four-tenths faster than us. They kept this pace all the stint. OK, perhaps we were able to fight a little bit more at the beginning but perhaps pushing a bit more on the tyres.
“I have no regret on the strategy,” he insisted, “no regret on the pace. We did this instead compared to yesterday. Let’s be focused on China now.”
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