Vasseur wants answers: "We need to be clear and honest with ourselves"

A lot of negative noise has come from the Mercedes garage during March, but in Saudi Arabia Ferrari finished behind the German team. In Italy, the plan was to challenge Red Bull for the World Championship, but they are fighting hard to even be the second-quickest team. Fred Vasseur is searching for the answers and after admitting the pace is not what they expected. 

Charles Leclerc has scored just six points out of two races. The man who finished second in the World Championship last season has recorded a DNF and could only manage seventh in Jeddah. Though the 25-year-old did advance from 12th on the grid. 

Work to do for Ferrari 

Vasseur arrived during the winter break and knew he had a challenge on his hands. Two races in and the downfalls can't be blamed on the new boss but he is working hard to identify and improve. 

"The most difficult in my business after a race like this is to understand what is going well and what is not. We have positive points, but we need a step on the reliability. Even the first stint of the race we can be happy with, but the race was based on the last stint and clearly we did not have the pace. In the tyre management we were a bit conservative, but it's only a matter of one or two tenths. Nothing to do with the gap we had today. We need to understand the lack of performance and it's not the tyre management," the Ferrari boss told Sky Sports. 

Ferrari are currently fourth in the World Championship: "When it's not going well. We need to be clear and honest with ourselves that the pace was not what we expected," Vasseur concluded.