Vasseur refuses to discuss car problem which affected Hamilton and Leclerc in Spain

Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur shot down questions over the problem which affected the team’s cars during the Spanish Grand Prix.

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Lewis Hamilton described his car as feeling “the worst it has ever been” after slipping to sixth place in the last race.

Ahead of this weekend’s race Hamilton said both cars had been “massively” compromised by the problem. However he refused to elaborate on the cause, saying Ferrari “don’t want us to talk about it much”.

Vasseur also refused to address the problem when asked during yesterday’s press conference. “When I’m telling you in the press conference that I won’t disclose, don’t come back 10 minutes later to try to understand,” he said.

“And the Friday after, to try to understand, I won’t disclose what’s happened. It is like it is. Full stop.”

Pressed for any details on the problem, Vasseur replied sarcastically: “We put the front wheel [on] the rear.”

Charles Leclerc, who finished third in Spain, indicated at the end of the race he understood the problem the team encountered. “I know why the last part of the race was poor,” he said. “I’ll explain, but there is an explanation.”

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Hamilton’s radio messages about handling problems in Spain

Lap	Speaker	Message
19	Hamilton	I’ve got massive understeer, mate. Did you take wing out?
19	Adami	Negative.
30	Hamilton	Yeah just no grip, mate. The rear is nowhere today.
55	Adami	The Safety Car is deployed. Hamilton slows down And box.
55	Hamilton	I’ve got a massive vibration.
55	Adami	Charge button on. And we are boxing. Let me know for flap when you can.
55	Hamilton	Uh, maybe that was too much front. Got massively oversteery. So, can go the opposite way.
55	Adami	We can go down four clicks. Copy that. Down four clicks.
55	Hamilton	Yeah. Take five. Got massive vibration on these tyres for some reason.
57	Hamilton	The front of the car feels so light, all of a sudden. Something wrong with that last front wing, I think.
57	Adami	Understood. We corrected for this stint. Diff mid three, suggestion.
62	Hamilton	The race restarts Ah, got no front wing.
64	Hamilton	I don’t know what’s wrong with this car, mate.
64	Adami	Two laps to go, try your best. Hulkenberg 0.4 behind.
66	Hamilton	Yeah, unbelievable guys. There’s something wrong with this car mate it’s the worst it’s ever been.

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10 comments on “Vasseur refuses to discuss car problem which affected Hamilton and Leclerc in Spain”

F1 in Figures (@f1infigures)
14th June 2025, 10:53

So he first had oversteer, then they massively reduced the front-wing angle during his last pit-stop and then he had understeer. That’s not too much of a mystery. Having said that, from Hülkenberg’s car it looked as if Hamilton was driving a rally car, but maybe he had to drive so aggressively to make the car turn (like he had to do in Monaco 2019). Leclerc was quite slow in the second half of the race as well for some reason.
Ideals (@ideals)
14th June 2025, 10:53

Either that car wasn’t legal or they made a really dumb dumb mistake that would get them laughed right out of the paddock for.

Either way, just another Sunday at Ferrari.
1. David BR (@david-br)
  14th June 2025, 12:13
  
  Vasseur, Hamilton and Leclerc: there is an explanation we all know but we can’t tell you. Did they all do a crash course in how to create mystery, intrigue and suspicion? Almost bound to be actually something really dumb then.
2. anon
  14th June 2025, 12:47
  
  I think this is more to do with the attacks that have been directed towards Vasseur in the Italian press and not wanting to say anything that they might then use against him.
Ajaxn
14th June 2025, 11:22

The fans are making the comparisons, even if Ferrari isn’t.

The fans know the level of professionalism that Hamilton requires and got at Mercedes. Ferrari can’t see where they need to do better, and so it’s a mystery to them. Why are the press and the fans on their backs? They just don’t get it.
Neil (@neilosjames)
14th June 2025, 12:52

Normal team: We had an issue with [xyz] and we’re working on fixing it.

Ferrari: The seagulls follow the trawler because they know the pigeon doesn’t like soup and we don’t want to discuss why the owl couldn’t fly properly.
grat
14th June 2025, 15:10

Vassuer: “We screwed up. We screwed up bad, but we don’t really want to talk about it, because the Italian press is already annoying as @$#%^.”
1. anon
  14th June 2025, 21:02
  
  grat, it would seem that the Italian press are continuing to launch attacks on the team anyway (or may be doing so precisely because Vasseur isn’t talking to them).
  
  They are now throwing out the claim that, after the free practice sessions, the engineers working on Hamilton’s car decided to change the ride height of his car before he went into qualifying – despite the fact that Hamilton had not asked them to make any changes to the set up of his car. To make matters worse, the engineers only told Hamilton that they’d changed the set up of his car after the race had finished (something that Hamilton was reportedly not impressed about when he found out).
  
  Such claims do have to be treated with some caution though, given what appears to have been a co-ordinated series of attacks in the Italian press targeting Vasseur from sources that might have particular self-interests.
  1. grat
    14th June 2025, 22:18
    
    If that’s true, then I’m impressed with Hamilton’s self-control. Historically, he’s had a poor reaction to engineers screwing him. It would imply as well, that a similar change was made to LeClerc’s car, as both cars supposedly had the same issue.
    
    Unfortunately, it wouldn’t surprise me.
    
    But it wouldn’t surprise me if it was made up, either.
Jere (@jerejj)
14th June 2025, 17:11

Disclosing should be okay in 10 years time, or 30 years at the very latest.