Ferrari boss breaks his silence on Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc's underwhelming F1 Bahrain GP

Ferrari boss Fred Vasseur was disappointed with an underwhelming weekend for Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc at the Bahrain Grand Prix on Sunday. The duo didn't have the best of weekends on a track where the red car has often excelled.

This time around, though, things did not go to plan for either Leclerc or Hamilton. Leclerc started the race in P2 on medium tires, while Hamilton was in P9 with the same strategy.

The duo had a strategy of going ahead with a long first stint that would see both Hamilton and Leclerc not pit at the same time as their competitors, who started the race on soft tires and tried to utilize the tire offset. That was the strategy that saw Lewis start to close up to the top four while Charles jumped Lando in the process.

It did appear that Leclerc was destined for a podium while Lewis Hamilton could potentially secure a result better than P4, but it wasn't meant to be as the safety car came out. As soon as the safety car was out, the Ferrari duo was pitted for hard tires while their rivals had soft and medium tires.

This led to Hamilton just dropping away for a solitary P5 while Leclerc was overtaken by Lando Norris and, hence, lost out on a podium. The Ferrari team boss, Fred Vasseur, didn't interact with the media after the race but expressed his disappointment in a press release issued a few hours later.

Talking about the race, the Ferrari team boss said that the squad was probably a bit too conservative, and that cost them. Vasseur said,

"The positive is that we scored more points than our direct competitor, and in the end it's a good result, but it's a mixed feeling because I think the safety car was at the worst time for us, when we were on the medium, probably doing the best stint. We had to stop, but it is like it is. Let's start next week from scratch to try to do a better job. We are all surprised with Mercedes, that the soft could do 24 laps at the end. We were on the conservative side."

Lewis Hamilton's Ferrari teammate disappointed

Lewis Hamilton's Ferrari teammate, Charles Leclerc, was disappointed with how the race panned out, as in the end, he lost out on a potential podium. If the safety car pit window had not come into the picture, the driver might have been able to finish on the podium and potentially even challenge George Russell for P2. Talking about the race, Leclerc said,

"I am a bit disappointed. At the end of the day, we did everything that we had to. The start was tricky with the medium. We lost a few places. We had to be patient - we went a bit longer. Then it started to pay off. Then there was the safety car, which re-zero'd everything, and then on the hard we were struggling."

He added,

"It's a shame that we loose out on the podium. I felt like this was the best we could do today. It's disappointing when you have some much fight towards the end - and you ar fighting for the first podium of the season - the pace is not here, not good enough to achieve that. I hope that soon we will have the car to get back on it."

Lewis Hamilton made his way up the field from P9 to P5 but kept losing a few tenths throughout the stint compared to Leclerc.