Team boss Frederic Vassuer has addressed Ferrari’s “miscommunication” with Charles Leclerc after he lost out to Lewis Hamilton under the Safety Car in Saudi Arabia.
The race fell away from Ferrari when the Safety Car was deployed on Lap 18 due to Lance Stroll’s stricken Aston Martin.
This allowed Hamilton, who Leclerc was ahead of before the pit stops, to make a pit stop under the Safety Car.
The seven-time world champion rejoined ahead of Leclerc in sixth-place.
Leclerc could have got ahead of the Mercedes driver, however, he was informed too late by his Ferrari race engineer to “push from Safety Car line one”.
He was told: “Try to push from Safety Car line one. Hamilton just pitted.”
Leclerc replied: “Xavi, you need to tell me that before!”
Engineer said: “Copy.”
Leclerc: “No, but come on!”
It proved to be another disappointing race for Ferrari, who came away from Jeddah with a sixth and seventh.
Speaking to the media after the race, while Vassuer acknowledged it as “not a good call”, he didn’t want to focus on it.
“Yes, it was not a good call,” he said. “It is like it is. It’s not the main issue and I think it would be a mistake from our side to focus on [it].
“I don’t want to say it’s details. It was a miscommunication and we will have to speak, to fix it. It’s not the main issue at all over the weekend.”
Vasseur conceded Ferrari will need to investigate their lack of pace during the second half of the race when running on the hard tyre.
“The most difficult thing in my business after a race like this is to understand what is going well and what is not,” he added. “We have positive points, but we need a step on the reliability. Even the first stint of the race we can be happy with, but the race was based on the last stint and clearly we did not have the pace.
“In the tyre management we were a bit conservative, but it’s only a matter of one or two tenths. Nothing to do with the gap we had today. We need to understand the lack of performance and it’s not the tyre management.”
Keyword: ‘It would be a mistake to focus on it’ - Ferrari address Charles Leclerc’s radio mix-up