{"id":120081,"date":"2025-09-07T04:35:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-07T04:35:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/120081\/"},"modified":"2025-09-07T04:35:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-07T04:35:07","slug":"vasseur-explains-why-ferrari-didnt-use-hamilton-to-give-leclerc-a-tow-%c2%b7-racefans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/120081\/","title":{"rendered":"Vasseur explains why Ferrari didn’t use Hamilton to give Leclerc a tow \u00b7 RaceFans"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur explained why the team didn\u2019t maximise Charles Leclerc\u2019s<\/a> chances of taking pole position by using his team mate\u2019s car to give him a tow.<\/p>\n

The team went into the session knowing Lewis Hamilton<\/a> would take a five-place grid penalty for Sunday\u2019s race. During Thursday\u2019s press conference Hamilton said he was willing to help his team mate in qualifying by running in front of him so Leclerc could benefit from his slipstream and reach higher speeds on the straights.<\/p>\n

After their first runs in Q3 Leclerc was second-fastest and Hamilton fourth. However Ferrari chose not to use Hamilton to give Leclerc a slipstream to improve his lap time.<\/p>\n

They opted to send Leclerc out of the pits behind Yuki Tsunoda\u2019s<\/a> Red Bull with Hamilton behind him. Leclerc did not improve on his final lap and fell to fourth place. Hamilton took fifth and will start tomorrow\u2019s race from 10th.<\/p>\n

Vasseur said they chose not to use Hamilton\u2019s car to give Leclerc a slipstream because drivers are bound by the requirement to obey a maximum time between the two Safety Car lines during qualifying.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith this story of maximum lap time, if you do it [give one car a tow] you have to sacrifice one car,\u201d he told the official Formula 1 channel, \u201cand it\u2019s important for the team and for the two drivers to be in a positive mood.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said the team also wanted to prioritise ensuring Leclerc was not distracted from preparing his tyres before starting his final lap.<\/p>\n

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\u201cFor sure it could work,\u201d said Vasseur, \u201cbut it also could not work at all.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven for Charles, because you are much more focused then on the tow, the gap with the car in front, than on the tyre preparation. And the tyre preparation is so important today that we decided to be focused on our own pace.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leclerc qualified two tenths of a second off pole winner Max Verstappen<\/a>. Vasseur suspects the team could have taken pole position at home.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think everything was possible today,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was so tight that it could have been pole position, but could have also been much worse. At one stage Norris was quite close to being out.\u201d<\/p>\n

He pointed out the gap between first place and 15th was as little as six tenths of a second at one stage in qualifying. \u201cIt means that everybody on the grid today will say \u2018with this or this I could have done a much better job\u2019. But it is like it is, and let\u2019s be now focused on tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n

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2025 Italian Grand Prix
\nBrowse all 2025 Italian Grand Prix articles<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur explained why the team didn\u2019t maximise Charles Leclerc\u2019s chances of taking pole position…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":120082,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[53036,1665,1687,831,372,6537,8234,832,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-120081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-f1","tag-2025-italian-grand-prix","tag-charles-leclerc","tag-f1","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-frederic-vasseur","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120081\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}