‘The potential is there’ – Why Vasseur believes Ferrari had the pace to win in Madrid

Fred Vasseur was confident that Charles Leclerc could’ve won the Spanish Grand Prix if an incident had disrupted the latter stages of the race, with the Ferrari Team Principal believing that “the potential is there” for the team.

Leclerc qualified fifth and gained an early position from the retirement of his team mate Lewis Hamilton, but unlike those around him, he and the team opted not to pit for fresh tyres when the Virtual Safety Car was deployed.

As a result, he inherited the lead and maintained a consistent gap to Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli, with Ferrari hoping that the race would see a red flag or Safety Car to give Leclerc what would essentially be a free pit stop.

Unfortunately, that didn’t materialise and he was finally called in after spending nearly 50 laps on the hard compound, dropping him out of podium contention. He eventually crossed the line 29.116s behind Antonelli and narrowly held off George Russell for P4.

“You see that you always have positives and negatives, it doesn't matter the weekend,” Vasseur said. “The pace of Charles in the race was more than good – we did a stint of 49 laps I think with the hard and the pace was still there.

“All the teams did the same with one car on softs or mediums and another one on hards to cover all the options. He was leading the group of [drivers on] hards and I think with a second incident, a red flag, it was the win.

“A Safety Car, it would have been P2, P3. It's more a strategy than something else and on his side, the pace was good. It's the only thing that we can do on Sunday. If we missed something, it's more yesterday [in Qualifying]. Today I think we did what we had to do – we took the risks we had to take and the pace is the pace that we need to have.”

While Leclerc was able to demonstrate Ferrari’s strength in race trim, Hamilton only lasted a short time before a brake issue forced him to retire the car, marking his first DNF of the season.

The Briton enjoyed a fantastic launch to instantly challenge Max Verstappen for P3, with the Dutchman offering him the position after he cut the first corner. However, Hamilton quickly began to drop back as he reported that the brake pedal was going long and he couldn’t stop the car.

He did manage to make it safely back to the garage, where he was left to rue the missed opportunity, telling Sky Sports F1: “I think we had the car to fight for a win today, and unfortunately it just didn't work out.”

Asked whether the problem was caused by a small brush with the wall, Vasseur replied: “Obviously I don't know, because they were working on the car when I left. The pedal was long on the end of Lap 1, I think, and we tried to fix it from the pit wall, and then it happened again a couple of corners later, and at this kind of track it makes no sense to take a crazy risk.

“There were still 56 [laps to go]. The first time it happened was from Lap 2 and it was too risky.”