Adam Cooper F1

Ferrari missed an opportunity in Singapore

Ferrari boss Fred Vasseur admits that his team must do a “better job” and be consistent through a whole race weekend in the wake of a frustrating Singapore GP.

The red cars were fast on Friday, but the team lost its way on Saturday, with a Q3 mistake for Charles Leclerc and a crash for Carlos Sainz – both blamed on cold tyres – leaving them starting only ninth and 10th on the grid.

They recovered to fifth and seventh in the race, but that was rather less than what the SF-24 would have been capable of from better starting positions.

“It’s always good to finish the weekend on a positive tone, and honestly today, it was a very good race,” said Vasseur.

“It’s true that on the other hand you increase a little bit the frustration after a poor Saturday, when you have this kind of race.

“But I prefer to have a frustration on Sunday evening, after Saturday, with a good race, than a poor race. And you say, ‘Okay it was like this.’ I think it’s good to finish and to attack the three or four weeks break with a positive tone.”

Vasseur admitted that the team had got it wrong in qualifying and paid the price on Sunday.

“On Friday we were in better shape, and it means that we missed something during the weekend, it’s clear,” he said. “When you start in Singapore ninth and 10th, you know that we made something wrong on Saturday.

“But it’s not the Sunday that we have to blame something or someone. It’s more to do a better job on Saturday.

“I don’t want to blame something or someone, that it’s part of the game, and we have to be focused honestly to do a more consistent weekend.

“I think it’s true for everybody. When you are in this pack today, as soon as you will do a small mistake, it doesn’t matter if it’s quali or race, or even free practice now, it’s quite difficult to recover.”

Vasseur provide some insight into the tyre temperature issues in Q3, and which left Leclerc especially frustrated.

“I think the story had nothing to do with the blankets, the story is that when we exit from the pit that we were all playing a kind of a game, because nobody wanted to be first,” he noted.

“Nobody wanted to be last. We did a fake to release the car from the pit lane, and everybody was trying to copy the others.

“And then we stopped a little bit at the pit exit. And we recovered a large part of this, but it’s true that we arrived at Turn 2 slightly lower on tyre temp, but marginally.

“And again, we have one lap, you are chasing the last kph in Turn 1, because at the end of the day, when you are one hundredth behind the guy in front of you, that you have some regrets if you didn’t push.

“It is like it is. We have to take this, I discussed with Charles, and it’s part of the game.”

Vasseur insisted that both drivers showed good pace in the latter part of the race on the hard tyres.

“I’m not focused on the others,” he said. “But the last 25 laps, I think we did the same race time as Lando. Perhaps he was doing some push, cool, push to recharge the battery and to try the fastest lap, I didn’t follow.

“But at least we were into the pace, and its encouraging. But the target was not to match to Lando today, it was to come back to score points. And on this, I think we had a good recovery.”

He added: “The strict result of the weekend, is not the one expected, but the result of the Sunday is a good one. It’s a good race. We had a strong pace. Good start for Charles, Carlos was a little bit on the dirty side and a bit blocked, but then a good strategy, a good pit stop, with tyre management in the line of the last couple of events.

“And I think we can be pleased with this. Now we have a couple of weeks to prepare for  the last six races, and to be ready power for Austin.”

Stella says that McLaren can’t risk holding back on updates

McLaren Formula 1 boss Andrea Stella says that his team can’t back off on its development plans for the MCL38 despite its current advantage.

The team has made a point of not bringing many updates recently, and has instead focus on optimising what it has.

The car has been the pacesetter at most venues, with Lando Norris scoring a dominant win in Singapore last weekend.

More updates are coming for Austin and beyond, but the team faces the challenge of possible disrupting its currently successful package while it tries to optimise the car for the new parts.

With that in mind plus the need to focus on 2025 it’s tempting for the team to rein in its development plans, but Stella says it would be wrong to do that.

“We do have some stuff in the pipeline,” he said. “And obviously, when you have this kind of performance on track, you always may approach things from a cautious point of view in terms of development.

“At the same time, we need to trust the process. We need to trust the way we’ve been working so far. I’ve said already that we have taken our time to make sure that once we deliver [parts] trackside, we have done the due diligence. So I don’t think this will change our plans.

In F1, I’m not sure you can back off too much, because backing off means that the others may catch. And we don’t know what the plans of the others are.”

Stela cited Red Bull’s return to form in Singapore as an example of how quickly things can change.

“In Red Bull we see that in a track in which they thought they would have not been very competitive, ultimately, they were potentially second best,” he said.

“I think we haven’t seen Ferrari today very well, but even Ferrari, FP1/FP2 they seem to be as fast as us. And the final stint of Leclerc was very competitive. So I think the race may give us a little bit of maybe flattering. I think you say like this.

“The situation from a competitiveness point of view, I would say we need to keep being aggressive in terms of development.”

Stella said that the advantage in Singapore was down to the car working especially well at high downforce levels rather than the MCL38 getting inherently better relative to rivals.

“I think if I look at previous races, at this high level of downforce, we seem to be very competitive,” he said. “So I think it might have to do more with the level of downforce than with the fact that we may be chipping away at getting more and more out of the car.

“I think the car has been strong in this configuration.

“I always make the examples of Hungary and Zandvoort. Even Hungary was a relatively dominant victory in itself, and like Zandvoort and like this one. So I think at the moment is more that the car in this configuration has the better aerodynamic efficiency across the grid, while at low drag, I think the efficiency of Ferrari and Red bull is much more comparable to our car.

“We know certainly that we have invested much more at this level of downforce, than what we have done at lower downforce, even though I’ve said already after races like Spa and Monza, we have definitely made a step forward in terms of retaining downforce when we reduce the level of drag.”

Stella said that Norris’s advantage over Verstappen shrank in the late stages of the Singapore race because of concerns about backmarkers.

“In fairness, in the second part of the second stint, our attention was drawn on the fact that as soon as you got behind the back markers, the car started to feel tricky. So if it was all about like, no issues, no mistakes, no lockup.

“We had seen already in practice that as soon as you are behind a slow car, things look like there’s something wrong with the car. It’s just the effect of the dirty. So the focus was entirely on bringing the car home.

“We suggested to Lando to have an attempt at the fastest lap, which we achieved. But after that, we didn’t want to talk about fastest lap anymore.”

Red Bull boss Christian Horner says that the Singapore GP indicated signs of “real progress” with the tricky RB20 – despite Max Verstappen finishing 20 seconds behind dominant race winner Lando Norris.

Red Bull had a floor revision in Baku that worked well on Sergio Perez’s car, but was less obvious on Verstappen’s due to a set-up mistake prior to qualifying.

Verstappen was happier with the car in Singapore, starting second and beating everyone else bar Norris in the race itself.

Horner noted that the Dutchman was particularly quick on the harder tyre in the second part of the race.

“First of all, you have to congratulate Lando and McLaren,” he said. “They had a very strong car this weekend, and particularly on the first stint, they were very quick. I think on the hard tyre, we looked in better shape.

“But of course, the gap is way too big by then, at a track where anyway it’s very hard to overtake.

“So I think if you roll back the clock to Friday, on Friday night I think if you’d have said we would qualify on the front row and take second place, a significant amount ahead of the rest of the field, I think we would have certainly taken that.

“But obviously, the gap to Lando was significant in the first part of the race, and we’ve now got the best part of a month to work hard and try and bring some performance to the car in Austin.”

He added: “I think Lando was a step ahead, particularly on the medium tyre. On the hard it didn’t show as much, but on the medium tyre, he was he was very, very quick today.

“But the rest of the field, I didn’t see a car that was quicker than Max. I thought Piastri had good duration to his stint on that medium tyre, but then on a hard tyre, it was an 18-second gap, and it seemed to be static for a long period.”

Horner admitted that Red Bull knew it was beaten during Norris’s first stint, which saw McLaren telling its driver to increase an already impressive gap.

“With the pace he had in hand on that tyre at that point we’ve conceded the race on pace,” he said. “He touched the wall for the first time, then he touched it for the second time. But obviously they’ve got it got away with it.

“I actually think Max drove a very strong race today, and that was what we had. Which when you consider where we were a couple of weeks ago, I think we have made some real progress. And obviously we’ve got a lot of work to do before Austin.”

Horner said the team had made a good recovery for qualifying in Baku after going the wrong way on setup in Friday practice.

“I think we wanted to avoid a repeat of last year,” he said. “And I think perhaps we overcompensated.

“But I think the way the team reacted, the effort that went into that reaction, we were able to give Max a much better car [on Saturday]. And obviously in the race we couldn’t compete with Lando today, but we had the rest of the field covered.”

Regarding Perez’s drive to 10^th place he said: “Checo had a good first lap. He qualified out of position, and then he just really struggled to overtake.

“He was struggling a little for traction in the areas where you want the traction, out of Turn 3, and onto the back straight. But that was what he could manage today.”

An already strong McLaren has had another boost…

Red Bull Racing has suffered another key loss as its head of strategy Will Courtenay is joining McLaren in the role of sporting director.

That job largely involves dealing with the FIA on regulations and so on, and is currently being done at the Woking ream by racing director Randeep Singh, to whom Courtenay will now report.

Red Bull is already losing its own current sporting director Jonathan Wheatley, who joins Sauber/Audi in 2025.

McLaren says that Courtenay’s “role will help grow the team’s sporting operations as the team continues its pursuit of success in the FIA Formula 1 World Championship.”

Cambridge University engineering graduate Courtenay joined Red Bull in 2003 as a systems engineer, when the team was still known as Jaguar.

Later he was a strategy engineer and a senior analyst, before becoming head of strategy in 2010, a role he’s held ever since.

“We are delighted to welcome Will to McLaren,” said Andrea Stella. “His experience, professionalism and passion for motorsport make him the ideal candidate to lead our F1 sporting function.

“We are now entering a key phase in our journey as a team, and we are confident that he will be a great addition to our strong leadership team as we strive to continue challenging for wins and championships.”

No starting date has been given for Courtenay.