Vasseur/Ferrari: Team orders? “Too early to make a decision before Monza”

Immediately after the start of the race at Monza, the two Ferraris driven by Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton got in each other’s way. Hamilton swerved to avoid a collision, briefly dropping from the battle for third place to tenth. The debate over who was to blame for the incident and whether team orders were involved really took off after that.

Incident not good for the team

Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur said after the Italian Grand Prix, which ended disappointingly with Leclerc retiring following a crash and Hamilton finishing sixth: “The outcome of the incident in Turns 1 and 2 isn’t good for the team, if that’s the question.”

Vasseur draws a comparison with McLaren

On the subject of team orders, the Frenchman said: “I think I recently made a good comparison. Namely, that Piastri was leading the standings at McLaren at this stage of the season last year. And if McLaren had put all their eggs in the Piastri basket, Max Verstappen would have become world champion.”

Formula 1 fans will recall that after the summer break, Oscar Piastri was leading the World Championship standings ahead of his McLaren team-mate Lando Norris. Then Piastri suffered a dip in form – whilst at the same time Max Verstappen of Red Bull Racing stepped up a gear, staging a spectacular comeback across the second half of the season. In the end, Lando Norris became World Champion, narrowly ahead of Max Verstappen. Ahead of the final race in Abu Dhabi, all three drivers still had a chance of winning the World Championship. So, applying this to Ferrari and the present situation: don’t make a decision too early and thereby take away the other driver’s – or possibly your own – chance of the title.

Ferrari-Teamchef Fred Vasseur

Foto: XPB

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Vasseur: “But of course you have to make a decision at some point; however, I think it was too early to make that decision before Monza. Now we have time to discuss it with the lads.” So does that mean a decision will be made after Monza, i.e. before Madrid (in other words, now)?

Not an easy decision

Vasseur: “We’ve spoken about situations like this before: it’s obviously never good for a team to lose points, but that goes without saying. Well, at the start of the season, every team principal in the world would probably prefer to have their drivers compete against each other, but as a team principal, freezing the starting positions – you mustn’t imagine that this is an easy decision. You do it for the team, you do it for the results in the end, but it’s never an easy task.”

The Frenchman: “In principle, I’d love to let them race this weekend. But realistically, you have to make a decision at some point, and every team is different, and we’ll have to make a decision, and we will decide.” What exactly that means for the upcoming races may well become clear as early as this weekend in Madrid.