When Pierre Gasly Was Puzzled By Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari Strategy

For a long time before Fred Vasseur took over as Team Principal, and for a short period afterward, Ferrari was quite infamous for its strategic blunders. One such moment came at the 2023 United States GP, where they put Charles Leclerc on a completely baffling plan.

Most of the other drivers were following a two-stop strategy that day. Not Leclerc, who had been warned by fellow driver Pierre Gasly about the same before the race, though.

In an interview with Will Buxton after the Grand Prix, Gasly spoke about this interaction. It was Leclerc who came up to ask him if he was going to do a one-stop like him. “There’s no fu*king way, I am going for a one-stop,” was the Frenchman’s reply.

“We looked at each other and I was a bit confused by what he was saying,” he added. And Leclerc should have listened to him and spoken to the Ferrari strategists, to talk them out of this bizarre idea. In the end, it bit Leclerc and the Maranello-based outfit back.

The one-stop strategy ruined his outing as he was eventually disqualified because the underfloor plank of his car had also worn more than the permissible limit.

Pierre Gasly: “Charles came to me on the grid before the race and asked if I’m also going for a one-stop, and I said no fucking way.”
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Gasly, knowing how Leclerc’s race went, added, “I don’t think he liked that one-stop strategy much“.

This was just an example of Ferrari’s questionable decision-making that has plagued so many of their races in recent years. Vasseur, however, addressed this problem head-first and improved the situation profoundly over the last few months.

Can Ferrari take the fight to McLaren in 2025?

Heading into the 2025 season, Ferrari will have just one goal in mind: end their championship drought, having last won the title in 2008. They seem to have all the ingredients in place to mount a proper challenge and they aren’t that far down the pecking order. In 2024, they finished just 14 points behind McLaren, who won the whole thing.

Ferrari has signed Lewis Hamilton and Leclerc is arguably entering his prime. On paper, no other team has a driver pairing as strong as the Scuderia, and all they require is a competitive enough car.

Additionally, thanks to some changes in their personnel, with Ravin Jain replacing Inaki Rueda as Ferrari’s Strategic Director in 2023, the team has made much better calls lately—especially last season. Perhaps the best case in point was the 2024 Italian Grand Prix when Leclerc again opted for an outlier strategy—a one-stop—but this time went on to win the race.

Ferrari will now hope to build on their performances from last season and take the fight to McLaren to win the Constructors’.