Vasseur pinpoints Q3 collapse and Bottas VSC as Ferrari's twin US GP regrets

Charles Leclerc crossed the line second at the Circuit of the Americas behind Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli, but Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur left Austin convinced his team should have had far more to show from the United States Grand Prix.

Speaking after the race, Vasseur identified two specific moments that he believes denied Ferrari a double podium — and potentially the outright victory.

The Q3 collapse that set the tone

Vasseur was direct in placing the blame for Sunday’s limitations on Saturday’s qualifying session. Ferrari missed a critical window in the final two laps of Q3, leaving Leclerc without the grid position needed to run in clean air.

“Probably yes, I think that today it went well, everything went well, the pace was OK, we were aggressive with the strategy, because we had to overtake,” Vasseur explained. “Overall, if we missed something, it’s the last two laps in Q3 yesterday; I think it was the most important lap of the weekend probably, and it’s where we had the issue.”

Because track position is decisive in modern Formula 1, that qualifying failure forced Ferrari into an aggressive race strategy, burning tyre life while fighting through traffic as Antonelli controlled the race from the front in clean air.

Bottas hands Verstappen a lifeline

Despite the grid disadvantage, Ferrari was very much in the hunt for a double podium deep into the race. Lewis Hamilton was closing rapidly on Max Verstappen’s Red Bull, setting up a battle for third place in the closing laps.

Then came the intervention that ended that prospect. Valtteri Bottas suffered a mechanical failure and brought his Cadillac to a halt at the side of the track, triggering a virtual safety car that neutralised the race and effectively preserved Verstappen’s third place.

There was a small irony in the incident: Bottas’s Cadillac runs a Ferrari power unit. However, the nature of the failure — the car could not be moved under its own power — pointed to a hydraulic issue rather than an engine problem, meaning Ferrari’s own components were not at fault.

The timing of the VSC was nonetheless damaging for Hamilton, who had done the hard work of reeling in Verstappen only to see the gap frozen at the worst possible moment.

A fast car, a frustrating result

Vasseur’s post-race assessment underlined just how competitive Ferrari’s upgraded package was at COTA. The car showed strong race pace, tyre degradation was well managed, and the strategy team pushed aggressively given the circumstances.

Leclerc’s second place is a meaningful result, but with the pace Ferrari demonstrated across the weekend, Vasseur’s conviction that a double podium — and a shot at victory — was within reach will make the two missed opportunities all the harder to accept.