Vasser: We had to play it safe when choosing the settings.

      Frédéric Vasseur is prepared to admit that the troubles that befell the Ferrari team at the second round of the season had a serious impact on the team's work afterwards. After the Chinese Grand Prix Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton were disqualified when it turned out their cars did not comply with the technical regulations, and after that Scuderia found itself playing catch-up while its rivals continued to score points steadily.

      In Shanghai Hamilton’s SF-25 had an excessively worn skid plank under the floor, and his teammate’s car weighed less than permitted by the rules. As a result Ferrari had to raise the ride height, which affected the effectiveness of the aerodynamic package – downforce decreased, but the negative consequences did not stop there.

      “I think McLaren will win the championship – they’ve achieved excellent results with tyre work. And, for example, on a wet track they do wonders,” the head of the Scuderia admitted in an interview with The Race. “But we were completely focused on our own business, and at the very start of the season the disqualification story set us back a bit.

      We had to be cautious in our setup choices, and these cars are very sensitive to ride height. In fact, every extra millimetre costs you a position on the grid. And when you try to protect yourself because you can’t fully control what’s happening, it immediately has a big effect on results.

      All of this always brings a whole chain of consequences, because you spend more time looking for solutions to problems, so you pay less attention to tyre preparation, qualifying preparation and everything else. In the end you have to pay for it.

      A lot depends on various nuances, and as soon as you stop paying them proper attention the problems immediately worsen. By that I mean you lose one or two tenths and drop from first to fifth.

      It’s crucial to focus on the tasks whose resolution determines the results, and if your focus shifts because of other problems like disqualification, technical failures or something else, it’s very hard to stay at a high level.”

      According to Vasseur, Ferrari had to adopt a new approach to upgrading the car: “Now more depends on the stability of the platform as a whole. Development of this generation’s machinery is based on us paying much more attention to stability and drivability than simply increasing downforce. Over the past three years we managed to take a good step forward precisely when we worked on drivability…

      In particular I think that a year ago we made an excellent step forward at the Monza round and we are now trying even more actively to move in that direction.”