Fred Vasseur wants honests assessments from Ferrari after an underwhelming result at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.
Tipped to have the best power unit and with a less draggy car than last year, the Scuderia was expected by many to be a stronger threat to Red Bull at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit.
Instead, Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc finished a lowly sixth and seventh on race day, over half a minute behind winner Sergio Perez.
“The most important thing in this kind of situation is to know where we are going well and what we are doing wrong, we cannot bullshit ourselves," Vasseur told the media on how Ferrari should respond.
Not an easy weekend for us…
— Scuderia Ferrari (@ScuderiaFerrari) March 20, 2023
We know there’s work to do. The only way we’re going to get back to where we want to be is through hard work.
This starts now 👊 pic.twitter.com/fpw30PW0c8
“We have to change. We have to understand where we are wrong, and we have to push. It’s not [enough] to speak, we will not be faster like this.
“For me the picture is quite clear. The potential of the car is good, but it’s not enough compared to Red Bull because we are not able to extract the maximum from the car every time.”
Ferrari's main issue continues to be tyre wear as, following their high degradation in Bahrain, the team went conservative around Jeddah and were the fourth best team on race pace.
It had also been suggested that the Italian team turned down their power unit to ensure reliability, though that was denied by Vasseur.
Instead, the Frenchman claimed the crucial aim for Ferrari is to optimise performance at all times of the weekend.
“I don’t want to push on the positive side because the outcome of the weekend is not good and we have to be focused on what is going wrong, not on the positives,” he commented.
“But to do a proper analysis of what is going well, I think that qualifying went pretty well.
“For sure we always want to do a better job, and it was difficult to know exactly what was the potential of the Red Bull because Max didn’t do Q3, but at least I had the feeling that compared to Mercedes and Aston Martin we did a step forward.
“But potential is one thing, and I think on the potential side we did a decent step. The issue is we have to stay at this maximum potential all over the weekend, and it’s not what we are doing today.
“I think on some occasions we are there. But on some occasions, or some stints of the weekend, we are not able to be at the maximum of our possibility.”
