Ferrari own up to Leclerc ‘mistake’ that ruined F1 US GP

Leclerc started from pole position but slipped to sixth place after being the only driver to run a one-stop, having pitted for his sole tyre change on Lap 23, when he switched from mediums to hards. 

The Monegasque was later disqualified due to excessive plank wear on his car, compounding a miserable weekend that had seen him dosed up on painkillers to combat a tooth infection. 

“Clearly we have a mixed feeling because on one side of the garage with Carlos [Sainz], we did pretty well. Starting P4, finishing P4 and we finished two or three seconds behind Norris,” Vasseur explained.

“Everything went well. But then with Charles, who was in front of Carlos in the first stint, we committed to the one stop and [that] was not a good choice.

“But the issue is we didn’t have a clear picture of this before the race, we were a bit hesitating [before the race] and we were a bit hesitating in the first stint on whether to push or not push and we made a mistake.”

Leclerc said after the race that he believes Ferrari had “something wrong in our numbers”. 

“Unfortunately, this was definitely the wrong thing to do and for some reason there was something wrong in our numbers because we were far off the ideal race strategy,” he said. 

And Vasseur acknowledged the team had got their calculations wrong. 

“We discuss it together and it was not very clear before the race as you can imagine,” he said. “We had the two options in terms of numbers [one- or two-stop] it was very close.

“Where we made a mistake is we anticipated the field would be 50/50 and it wasn’t at all.”

 Vasseur added: “We have to be focused on the mistake and understand why we did this choice, because that will tell us the good one [strategy]. 

“With the elements we have at this stage it means the numbers we had on the pitwall and at the factory at this stage of the race were not a good one.”