Vasseur concedes Ferrari 'hurt' by costly failure

Fred Vasseur has conceded Ferrari's title challenge was "hurt" by coming home point-less from the Canadian Grand Prix.

Ferrari ended the season in second place behind McLaren, who won its first constructors' since 1998 by just 14 points in the Abu Dhabi finale. 

Both teams went level into the Yas Marina race on five grand prix wins apiece, Ferrari's most in a season since 2018, but the Scuderia ultimately fell short, with the barren run between Canada and Britain coming into question.

After a one-three in Monaco, Ferrari was second to Red Bull with 252 points with McLaren in third on 184. 

Four races later, this gap of 68 points was reduced to seven - 302 vs 295, with Ferrari enduring a terrible weekend in Montreal, not scoring any points as McLaren picked up 28. 

The Circuit Gilles Villeneuve was expected to suit the SF-24 machine, which also battled a botched Spanish GP upgrade which re-introduced porpoising, as Vasseur admitted the failure "hurt."

"I don't want to do the list, but we came back from Canada, which on paper was a good one for us, with zero [points] and that was a bit hard," Vasseur told media including RacingNews365 when asked if the team had lacked pace at certain times in the season.

"We had four races in a row with the upgrade when we struggled a little bit in this period, we lost something like 80 or 90 points to McLaren, and then you have a tough weekend like Baku, where even though we got P2 with Charles, we were in a position to do a much better job.

"Only Singapore was a tough one, with the two cars ninth and 10th in qualifying, we could have expected much better, but this is also true for McLaren."

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Vasseur on McLaren

The Frenchman also touched on the McLaren losing points, such as through a wrong pit-strategy at Silverstone.

"If you look at McLaren, if you go through the season, you can find tons of points, but it is my job to minimise these losses and it is always better if you have two-tenths more pace," he added.

"But from track to track, in the end, we were almost at the same number of wins, and McLaren performed a bit better in qualifying [in Abu Dhabi], and we were probably a bit better in the race, but it was really on the edge."