Australian GP, Ferrari second force
Faced with an overwhelming Mercedes, Ferrari settled for third and fourth place in the Australian GP, the opening round of the 2026 F1 World Championship. The Scuderia thus began the new technical era in the role of second force, a fact that would not have changed even in the face of the prospect of a double podium, which could have happened if the Maranello pit wall had stopped the cars during the Virtual Safety Car for Isack Hadjar’s retirement on lap 12.
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For Frederic Vasseur, however, even by stopping Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton there was no margin to fight with the Mercedes.
Vasseur’s words
“I don’t have a crystal ball, but I don’t think anything would have changed. At that stage of the race no one expected to stop, we wanted to go longer and make a stop later. Then we were unlucky with the second VSC (which arrived on lap 19 for Valtteri Bottas’ retirement, ed.), in which they closed the pit lane. But it went as it went, it was a good race and it’s a good starting point“, this was the comment of the Ferrari team principal to Sky Sport F1. “We know where we are compared to them, we have a lot of work to do“.
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“Yesterday the gap from Mercedes was larger, but I’m not sure we did the best we could. We need to correct these small mistakes in China“, he added. “I believe the gap is about half a second, then it depends from track to track. We have various things to improve before the next race and throughout the entire season. I had said that the Melbourne picture didn’t matter, the most important thing will be the ability to improve and upgrade the car: soon we will bring a nice update to the chassis, but we also need to improve on the engine and energy management. This applies to us, but also to everyone else: I’m not blind, probably Mercedes will also improve in turn, but we must focus on ourselves“.
