Vasseur (Ferrari): "Of course Leclerc is frustrated, Hamilton can win!"

Happiness and misery are never as close together in any sport as in Formula 1: seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton was just 64 thousandths short of landing his 105th Formula 1 pole, which would have been his seventh in Barcelona and his first since Hungary 2023! His first GP pole in red, of course. So pole position for the 41-year-old Englishman, his best performance since Silverstone 2024.

On the other side, Charles Leclerc in the valley of tears: mistake in turn 4, crash, chance of pole gone, the Monegasque is inconsolable and said to the journalists: "I'm ashamed of myself."

Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur when asked whether this is the strongest Ferrari so far in the 2026 season: "I can't say whether it's the strongest Ferrari. What I can say with certainty, however, is that we have never been this close to Mercedes before."

The Frenchman continued: "It's normal to be disappointed after qualifying sessions like this. I think Leclerc had the pace for pole position, and then to finish tenth is obviously not what we expected. It's true that he attacked like crazy, and it's also true that we worked like crazy to bring all the improvements to the Ferrari here to Barcelona."

"Charles is obviously frustrated, but he was a bit too hungry at the entrance to Turn 4. He was competitive in all the practice sessions. Unfortunately, he entered the corner at 5 or 6 km/h more than on the previous lap and that's probably the factor that caused the accident."

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Commenting on Lewis Hamilton's strong performance, the boss said: "Lewis has made progress, he is improving with the car and the team at the same time. He has achieved important results in recent weekends, with second places in Montreal and Monte Carlo, his best result in our Grand Prix, and he came to Barcelona with great confidence in the car and the team."

"He also knew that we would come here with a substantial update package for the car and he had the pace, even though he had to skip the first free practice session (young Beganovic was in the car, M.B.). You can see that he has more confidence and is bringing results home that way."

"I didn't know what to expect from qualifying. I don't spend my weekend waiting for something in qualifying. I just try to do my bit to make sure that Ferrari does the best possible job and that we get the maximum out of the car."

"In practice, some of the cars were very close together. It's impossible to make any predictions. It's very important to keep improving from practice to practice. Today, we managed to improve between Q1 and Q3, and that was certainly the main factor in our result."

What now in the Grand Prix? Vasseur says: "The race pace in the simulation was good on Friday, but it will be a difficult race. The track will be over 50 degrees and it will depend mainly, if not entirely, on tyre management as to what will happen."

"We need to keep the tyres alive and execute the strategy well. Yesterday we saw that we had a good pace, but the tyre wear was significant. That was just as true for us as it was for our opponents. That's why we saw the very close gap between the cars today. I guess tyre wear will play an important role in the Grand Prix in terms of the gaps."

"Ferrari can win this race and when you start from the front row, you always have to think about winning."