Braking issues derail Ferrari in Singapore

Ferrari struggled with overheating brakes for much of the Singapore Grand Prix and has lost ground to Mercedes in the constructors’ championship.

A year ago, Ferrari was beaten to the constructors’ title by McLaren at the final race of the season, but this year McLaren wrapped up the championship in Singapore while Ferrari sits third. The gap to Mercedes grew to 25 points after George Russell won and Kimi Antonelli was fifth, with Lewis Hamilton limping home due to brake concerns that had also impacted Charles Leclerc earlier on.

“We were over-heating, not from lap one, but from lap two or three,” Vasseur said. “We had to do lift and coast in the race. Even for them, at the end, it's not easy to drive because you have to adapt your braking point each lap.

“Clearly, when we pushed a couple of laps with Lewis, I think the pace was decent. But you can't do 95% of the race on the back foot and doing management.

“We all know that in Singapore, when you are in the middle of the pack, it's critical for the brakes. For sure, the fact that we didn't do FP2 didn't help at the end, but it was not expected at this point.

“In terms of safety, yes [it was fine], because we adapted the pace. It's not like Lewis was pushing like hell in the last lap – he was 30 seconds slower. In terms of safety, it was on the safe side for the target. The target is to be safe, but the target is not to be 30 seconds slower.”

Vasseur says there was a brief window where the Ferrari pace looked comparable to the front-running cars, but that there was little opportunity to assess the car’s potential without encountering the braking issues.

“I think we did a couple of laps with them, but then you don't know," he said. "Very early in the race we asked Charles to do lift and coast. It's not just a matter of doing a lift and coast when you're losing a little bit at the end of the straight. It's also to find the right braking point.

“All the race we were ‘a bit more’, ‘a bit less’, 'a bit more’, ‘a bit less’, ‘a bit more on the rear’, 'a bit more on the front’, ‘you have to change the brake balance’… In the end, you lose probably more on the reference for you when you are driving the car than on the pure potential.”