Ferrari’s Fred Vasseur has said understanding why a dip in Q3 performance occurred in the United States is imperative after its effect on the overall outcome of the Grand Prix.

Charles Leclerc finished second at the Circuit of The Americas, with his pace such that an outright victory challenge was likely had he qualified on the front row.

Fred Vasseur investigates Ferrari’s Q3 struggles at the United States Grand Prix

Along with Lando Norris and George Russell, Leclerc was one of the only drivers from the top four teams to fail to improve his lap time from Q2 to Q3, having been the fastest driver of the second portion of qualifying.

Indeed, his 1:34.198 from Q2 would have secured him second on the grid behind Kimi Antonelli’s Mercedes, even without the usual Q3 improvement that was seen by most of his immediate rivals.

But instead, Leclerc lined up fourth and, while he snatched second place from Max Verstappen out of Turn 1, was back behind the Red Bull by the end of the lap.

He spent the next three-quarters of the race in a strategy battle with Verstappen; a battle he won with 10 laps to go, but ended up 16 seconds behind Antonelli at that point. While Leclerc closed him down by about three seconds by the chequered flag as the Monegasque showed strong pace on the hards, his pursuit ultimately started from too far back.

The critical factor in this was the failure to improve in Q3, with Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur admitting that it’ll be the key area of focus coming out of what was otherwise a strong weekend.

“The frustration of tonight will be easy to manage because I think that, overall, we collectively did well and that we have to understand what we could do differently in Q3,” he said.

“But let’s put our focus on this because I think it’s, of this weekend, if I have to change something, it’s just the last lap of Q3.

“The pace was good because the pace, from the beginning from when we put the car on track on Friday morning to the last lap of the race, the pace was there.

“But it’s not just about the package; it’s also about execution.

“Where we have to pay attention is that competitiveness is not just about the package; it’s also the fact that sometimes it’s setup or tyre management; you are in the right spot, and you are doing a good weekend.

“Sometimes not, if you have the package when you are not in the right spot.”

Asked about whether he feels Ferrari has a particular sensitivity in Q3 that prevented the step forward others managed, Vasseur said the margins are so small, the tiniest misstep can have big consequences.

“At least, on this weekend, it was true for everybody,” he said.

“Probably Kimi did a step, because you can only imagine that he was not in the right spot before, and he put everything together for Q3.

“But I think the other seven cars, except Hadjar, did a step back. Charles was the fastest car in Q2, and, for sure, we didn’t do the perfect job in Q3.

“This is true for us and for everybody, but we have to put together all the parameters to try to have a better understanding of the situation.

“I think all the teams are improving step by step like this, but it’s so marginal that sometimes a gust of wind, you are sliding a little bit, overheat the tyres.

“For details, sometimes you can be out of the spot. It’s not that it costs you five tenths. Today, sometimes you have the top five cars from yesterday between P2 and P6; I think we had one tenth.

“If you don’t put everything together, you can move from P2 to P6.”

As for Leclerc, he pointed to having lost too much time in battle with Verstappen and Norris as the main factor behind his being beaten to the top step, although he suspected Antonelli’s pace was such that victory would have eluded him anyway.

On reflection, he was asked whether victory had gone begging.

“I mean, if you look at FP1, FP2 and FP3, we were very strong,” he said.

“If you look at qualifying, at the end of the day in Q3, it was extremely difficult to bring the tyres up to temperature, and we probably lost a shot at the victory there.”

Speaking after qualifying, Leclerc had pointed to how a small temperature change between Q2 and Q3 had been instantly felt behind the wheel.

“It’s very disappointing because I think there are some other weekends where we’ve been strong in free practice, but then coming to quali, it’s very clear that the others are just having a lot more in the straights, and it’s very difficult for us to match that,” he said.

“But I felt like it was a qualifying where we had the potential in the car. But the car also includes tyres, and in Q3, unfortunately, we were not in the right place.

“It was like one or two degrees less in Q3, and for me, it was a huge difference. Just really struggled in the out lap. I was sliding quite a lot already from the out lap, and that made it very difficult after that.

“It is quite frustrating, but yeah, there are reasons for it, and so, at the same time, I think it’s we just need to work harder and try and understand very well those tyres even better than what we are doing now, because the others I think normally have a bit more.

“It’s a bit easier for them to extract the lap time in Q3 than it is for us. As soon as we are a tiny bit outside the window, we pay a lot of the price. So this is something that we need to look into.”