Vasser: We did the most we could

At Suzuka, Charles Leclerc finished fourth and his teammate, Carlos Sainz, took sixth place, allowing Ferrari to earn 20 points, which isn’t too bad. Although by the standards of the Scuderia this is obviously not a result that we can be proud of, especially after the recent victory in Singapore.

Frédéric Vasseur, team boss: “First of all, my congratulations to Red Bull Racing for winning the constructors’ championship, they are performing well this season. If we talk about our race, I believe we did the maximum we could today and reduced the lead over Mercedes by another four points.

We knew that this track was not suitable for our car, but we kept the situation under constant control. Charles was good at saving tire lives, and importantly he overtook George Russell just when he needed to.

Lewis Hamilton drove fast, attacked really aggressively and got ahead of Carlos thanks to an earlier pit stop. We then decided to extend his stint on Medium tyres, hoping that this would allow us to regain the position at the end of the race, but we were unable to do so.

There is a very intense rivalry between us, Mercedes and McLaren, and the finishing order can change depending on the characteristics of the track, as we saw in Singapore. On the one hand, McLaren’s rapid progress worries us, on the other hand, they had a great race at Silverstone, on a circuit with similar characteristics.

The most important thing now is to remain calm, not to give in to pessimistic moods, but also not to be too optimistic. Of course we can’t be satisfied with 4th and 6th place, but today it was difficult to count on better results.

We used the right tactics and were still able to regain a few points against our closest rivals. If we had been just a few tenths faster this weekend, the race would have turned out differently.

Now it is important to stay as focused as possible, move forward gradually, step by step, and prepare for the next races, where we will really have to give everything.”