Never mind his driving skills, Ferrari could have done with Carlos Sainz' strategic calls as Fred Vasseur admits to another Maranello clusterf***

Who will ever forget Sainz dictating team strategy from his cockpit while at Ferrari, most notably as the Spaniard was told to pit after crossing the pitlane entry.

Yesterday, after crashing out on the opening lap, the Spaniard went backstage to assist with a strategic call that saw his teammate finish fifth.

Meanwhile, Ferrari did what it always does, grab defeat from the jaws of victory.

Insisting that the final rain would only last a lap the Maranello outfit opted to leave its two drivers out on slicks, while Lando Norris, George Russell, Alex Albon and a host of others immediately pitted for Inters.

Red Bull, Alpine and Haas waited another lap, while Ferrari resolutely hung on, convinced the rain would pass. It didn't.

To be fair, Lewis Hamilton led the field for one lap, followed by his stablemate, but, then, realising that the rain wasn't easing, Ferrari finally made the call.

Hamilton and Charles Leclerc rejoined in ninth and tenth, and while the Monegasque subsequently passed his teammate, so too did Oscar Piastri with an audacious move on the final lap.

"That's not what we came for," Vasseur told Canal+ at race end. First, in qualifying, we didn't put everything together, and I think our pace was much better than the result we got.

"Then, today, the strategy was not easy," he continued, "we made the wrong call at the end.

"Let's face it, we tried to stay out like Max, to survive with slicks when it started to rain, because we thought, mistakenly, that the shower wasn't going to last that long. Had this worked out, it would have been lovely, but it didn't! That's it, we lost.

"We must not try and blame someone but attempt to understand what went wrong in our decision-making system," he insisted. "The gamble was good, but we should have pitted one lap earlier, like Max.

"There are 23 races left and we have to look forward," he concluded. "The pace we showed on Friday, be it on a qualifying lap or long runs, was good, and that's what we need to build our season on, not on a strategy call that wasn't the right one at the end of the race."

Referring to Hamilton's complaint about the poor information he was receiving from his engineer, Riccardo Adami, the Frenchman said: "It was the first race, the first time that we have to communicate between the pit wall and the car, and we can do a better job and know each other more.

"For sure it was not a clean one at all, the strategy was difficult and we need to find a better way to communicate between the car and the pit wall but we will learn from Race 1 and it is not an issue."

"It was not a shock," he said, referring to the seven-time world champions' struggles, "but for sure it was not a good weekend for us.

"But we focus on next week," he added, "and learn a lot from this weekend because we made a mistakes.

"We need to improve the communication, understand what Lewis needs from the communication, and it is only in this situation that we can be in the situation. We will be much better next week."

Sadly, "we will learn from this", is a claim that Ferrari's various team bosses have been making for decades.

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