“We Made a Small Mistake”: Fred Vasseur Contradicts Charles Leclerc to Echo Carlos Sainz’s Post-Brazil Sprint Remarks

The 2023 Brazilian GP is easily becoming one of the most chaotic races of the season for many teams. The stormy qualifying played its part and then the completely opposite conditions during Saturday’s sprint action threw everyone off. In this commotion, Ferrari seemingly made an error in judgment because of which they could not maximize their points. However, this wasn’t the understanding of Charles Leclerc but now both Carlos Sainz and Frederic Vasseur have echoed each other’s thoughts and contradicted the Monegasque.

The Ferrari boss opened up about where his team was lacking during the Sprint race in his post-race interview. His comments were on the same wavelength as Carlos Sainz‘s comments after the race but not Leclerc’s.

Frederic Vasseur sides with Carlos Sainz while contradicting the assessment of Charles Leclerc in the 2023 Brazilian GP Sprint race

The Frenchman was satisfied with one aspect of the race but admitted the team made a mistake with the cooling of the tires. Because of this, both drivers couldn’t maximize their time on the track from lap 2 in the 24-lap race.

Frederic Vasseur admitted, “We knew this one would be difficult for us because we didn’t do the quali as you said. We were really focused on tomorrow, to save the maximum of tyres for tomorrow. We made a small mistake on the cooling today and we asked the drivers to do a massive lift and coast from lap 2, but overall I think we did a good one and we didn’t give up too many points to Mercedes.”

Ferrari’s Spaniard was of the exact same opinion and communicated that during his post-sprint interview as seen on X. Sainz said, “We did so much lift and coast, we lost a lot of time today. We didn’t expect to do so much. Hopefully, tomorrow we can push a bit more and be quicker.”

Read More: “In My Whole Career I Never Experienced This”: Charles Leclerc Left Shell Shocked as Massive Storm Halts Brazilian GP Qualifying

As we can see, both Vasseur and Sainz are on the exact same page. However, after finishing three places ahead of his teammate in P5, Leclerc did not feel the same.

Charles Leclerc left completely on his own with his opinion of the Brazilian GP Sprint race performance

Despite driving the only car that has won a race apart from Red Bull in the current season, the SF-23 is still no match for the RB19 and Leclerc understands that. Keeping the Red Bull and Lando Norris’s McLaren aside, the Monegasque believed the team had a decent pace, especially compared to their biggest rival Mercedes at the moment. However, his worries still lie in the massive difference between the qualifying and race pace.

Leclerc said, “I think the race pace wasn’t too bad if you compare it to Mercedes, but if you compare it to Red Bull and Lando, the difference is big. We need to understand why we are so quick in qualifying compared to our race pace.”

“It’s something we need to understand. It’s encouraging to see Tsunoda’s pace on the new softs,” he concluded. So with some insight into the SF-23’s race behavior, in which he starts from P2, Leclerc was satisfied with the Sprint race performance.

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With all these insights and admission of their mistakes, it will be interesting to see how Ferrari approaches the race and if they can maximize their points starting from P2.