Ferrari, how much regret in the Netherlands
The Dutch weekend was a carbon copy of the one at the Hungaroring, for Ferrari. Just like in Budapest, the SF-26 had started it as a contender for victory and ended it off the podium. At Zandvoort, then, errors at the pit wall and in the pits added up, knocking Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc off the podium.
Team principal Frederic Vasseur does not blame the car’s potential, whose pace might have been at the level of Kimi Antonelli and Lando Norris if the Ferrari drivers had not been blocked first by Oscar Piastri and then by George Russell. The Frenchman still presses on the execution button, the real limit of the Scuderia: between slow pit stops, tire management and race timing, and qualifying sessions finished too far back, Ferrari continues to lose crucial points.
Vasseur’s words
“So far this season sometimes we did not expect to get good results, while other times we thought we could do better and struggled more,” said the Ferrari team principal after the Dutch GP. “I believe there is much more in execution than in pure potential.”
“Today the execution was not good. The second start was not as fast as the first despite the soft tire and we had a poor pit stop,” he added. “The best lesson from this weekend is that, if you want to win and want to be ahead, you have to do a perfect job. This applies to us, but also to others. There is the possibility to go from P1 to P6 based on good or bad execution.”
Vasseur’s message to Ferrari is therefore clear: even before seeking absolute performance, which has arrived with the new floor and will come with the engine upgrade thanks to the ADUO-2 in Monza, the package at disposal must be optimized. A diktat that Maranello knows by heart but struggles tremendously to apply.
