Ferrari swerves Monza slipstream gamble as Vasseur backs harmony over heroics
Ferrari had a chance to play the classic Monza game on Saturday. It chose not to.
With Lewis Hamilton carrying a five-place grid penalty, the obvious move was to turn the seven-time champion into a windbreak for Charles Leclerc, hunting those precious kilometres per hour that can turn a front row start into a pole position at the Temple of Speed. Instead, team principal Fred Vasseur stuck with the conservative call: no towing, no choreography, no needless stress.
Leclerc ended up fourth, 0.215s shy of a surprise pole for Max Verstappen. Hamilton was fifth on the timesheet but will start 10th after his penalty bites. In the moment it felt like a missed opportunity for Ferrari at home. Vasseur didn’t see it that way.
“With this story of maximum lap time, if you do it, you have to sacrifice one car,” he told F1TV, pointing to the FIA’s stricter policing of out-lap pace that’s made slipstreaming far more complex. “It’s important for the team and for the drivers to be in a positive mood. It could work, but it also could not work at all. Even for Charles, you’re much more focused on the tow than the tyre preparation. The tyre prep is so important that we decided to be focused on our own run.”
There’s a cold logic to that. At Monza the slipstream is still worth time — sometimes a couple of tenths, sometimes not — but banking on it now comes with new pitfalls. The maximum lap time rule compresses the field on out-laps. Nail the gap and you’re a hero; miss it by a car length and you’re towing your rival, or you’ve cooked your tyres before Parabolica.
Hamilton, for his part, wasn’t exactly volunteering to be the sacrificial lamb. He said he’s never been a fan of manufacturing tows between teammates, and given he’s already taking a penalty, he needed to qualify as high as possible on merit. The subtext was clear: he’s here to limit damage on Sunday, not run interference on Saturday.
Leclerc kept his counsel. The Monegasque said it’s something the team can talk about, but he didn’t see it as the defining factor of the day. He knows what Monza becomes once the lights go out: a DRS convoy with tiny margins and even tinier windows to pass. “Overtaking is not going to be easy,” he admitted. “If I can stay in the DRS with the guys in front, maybe we can do something special. But it’s going to be tough.”
Could the tow have swung it? Possibly. Verstappen’s pole margin wasn’t insurmountable, and Ferrari had two bullets in the gun in Q3. But a perfectly timed tow sequence requires trust, rehearsed spacing and a willingness to compromise one car for the other. On a weekend where Ferrari’s rhythm looked tidy and the mood in the garage calm, Vasseur chose not to roll the dice just to light up the grandstands for a minute on Saturday. He’s thinking in stints, not sectors.
There’s also the internal balance to consider. Hamilton and Leclerc are locked together in the Drivers’ standings — fifth and sixth respectively — and Ferrari sits second in the Constructors’ on 260 points, 12 ahead of Mercedes. Every point now is money in the bank for Maranello’s bigger picture. Asking Hamilton to blunt his own race to boost Leclerc’s quali would have been a bold political move in September, at Monza of all places.
If you’re looking for fault, you can argue Ferrari didn’t squeeze every last trick out of a very Monza-specific playbook. If you’re looking for reason, you’ll find it in Vasseur’s emphasis on tyre prep and team equilibrium. In a season where margins behind Red Bull ebb and flow by the weekend, avoiding self-inflicted chaos counts for something.
Sunday will tell us whether restraint was the right call. Leclerc starts within striking distance, armed with a car that’s been gentle on its tyres and fast enough in a straight line to keep tabs in the DRS. Hamilton has work to do from 10th, but he’s got race craft and a long run pace profile that’s rarely anything but handy. If Ferrari walks out of Monza with a heavy haul and the garage still pulling in one direction, no one in red will be lamenting the tow that never was.
And if it comes down to a couple of tenths? That’s Monza. You either catch the train, or you watch its tail-lights disappear down the main straight.
