Boss Insists Ferrari Did Not Cheat In China

Ferrari’s “search for perfection” went “too far” in China, team boss Frederic Vasseur insists.

The Italian media has described the team’s 2025 car project as ambitious but “immature”, which was clearly seen in Shanghai where Lewis Hamilton won the sprint from pole but then struggled in the main race.

Worse still, after the race, FIA scrutineers found both cars to be illegal – Hamilton with an excessively worn plank, and Charles Leclerc underweight.

“We must have been too aggressive,” Vasseur told France’s L’Equipe. “That’s how it is.

“This setback shows that we are in search of perfection and that sometimes we look too far.”

In both cases, the cars were not far from being legal – just 1kg of weight for Leclerc, and Hamilton’s plank a tiny 0.5mm too thin.

“You have to make a distinction between disqualification because you’re taking risks and disqualification because someone is cheating,” Vasseur insisted.

“The aim of the game in F1 is to push yourself to the limit of all parameters, everywhere. To get to the last gram of weight, to get to the last tenth of a millimetre of a skid, to get to the last millimetre of wing deformation.

“It’s certain that the more pressure you’re under, the more intense the fight, the closer you need to get to those limits and the more risks you take.”

Vasseur is not writing off Ferrari’s chances of beating McLaren to the 2025 world championship.

“Of course McLaren is in good shape,” he is quoted as saying by Motorsport Total. “But that does not mean that the championship is over for us.

“We are talking about a tenth or a tenth and a half per lap,” said the Frenchman. “You can go from P6 to P1 or from P1 to P6, so we have to be calm, work step by step and make changes to the car until the very last moment.”