While the British GP brought happiness to the Mercedes garage, it did not do Ferrari any kindness. The Italian outfit devised an aggressive strategy for its racers which backfired badly. While Carlos Sainz managed to save face with a P4 finish, Charles Leclerc was down in the 17th place when he crossed the chequered flag. The Monegasque, furious with his failure to score points, dragged the Ferrari strategy that did not favor him at all. However, the Scuderia Team Boss Frederic Vasseur has now clarified the concerns by negating the claims that Leclerc had made.

The British GP presented all the F1 teams with a challenging weather that Ferrari could not brave through. Charles Leclerc had attained a P11 starting position on the grid after his poor performance at yesterday’s Qualifying. However, he did manage to improve his footing to get P7 at the start of the race. But it started raining after that, and the Ferrari strategists called Leclerc into the pits for an early tire change. As intermediate tires were fitted to his SF-24, the Monegasque found it hard to move on a track that was still too dry for the inters.

When it started pouring heavily, Leclerc’s tires were too worn out, thus leading to him losing precious time in the race. He had to do a pitstop once again, and this made him fall to the back of the grid. Blaming the pitstop decisions, the 26-year-old said, “With the info I had, it didn’t seem wrong to me, but facts tell [that] we’re maybe the only car that stopped and we threw the race in the toilet.” Thus, the Monegasque indicated that Ferrari had given him false information which led to him believing that a pitstop was necessary.

Throwing his recruit’s allegations out the window, Frederic Vasseur had a different song to sing about his tactics. Formula Passion quoted the Frenchman saying, “It is always different and easier to make the strategy after the race, when you have seen what happened. We gave the same information to the two drivers, but they were not in the same position on the track.” Vasseur somehow blamed Charles Leclerc by citing Carlos Sainz’s example as the Spaniard still got a top-5 place with the information he got while the Monegasque failed. However, the blame game went further as the Ferrari boss had some more to say about Leclerc’s weekend.

Fred Vasseur claims Charles Leclerc’s weekend performance led to agressive tactics

Throughout the weekend in Silverstone, Charles Leclerc simply looked like he could not tap into the power of his Ferrari. The Monegasque was 8th in FP1, and improved to 5th in FP2. However, Hulkenberg’s Haas proved to be faster than the Monegasque’s SF-24 at the second practice session. At the FP3, Leclerc again dropped to 6th on the grid, and during the Quali, he got eliminated in Q2. Now, Fred Vasseur claims the unimpressive timings that Charles recorded necessitated an aggressive approach from Ferrari to ensure he scored some points.

Fred Vasseur said, “Let’s say, it was a question of circumstances that pushed us to take that decision [of asking Charles Leclerc for an early pitstop]. If we had been in a better position from the start of the weekend, he would have been in the leading group and we would not have taken such aggressive decisions.” Thus, the Frenchman did not just drag Leclerc for his score in the Main Race, but he blamed his overall weekend’s performance for Ferrari’s seemingly wrong race strategy.

The highlight of this entire incident between Charles Leclerc and Ferrari is that the next race will come after two whole weeks. Thus, the two parties have enough time to resolve their issues and go over the parts where they need to improve. Once the Hungarian GP arrives on July 21, Leclerc needs to put his best foot forward and score enough points to close the gap between him and Lando Norris. Or else, he might drop out of the top-3 in the World Championship standings in no time at all. Do you agree with this perspective? Let us know in the comments below.