Ferrari had topped every practice session in Austin, and still Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton lined up fourth and fifth on the grid last Sunday, 25 October, behind Mercedes pole-sitter Kimi Antonelli. The Scuderia had the pace. They did not have the lap when it counted.

Vasseur was blunt about where the weekend was lost, telling Formula 1’s own post-race coverage that the problem was localized to a handful of corners on two laps.

“The issue is that we did all the laps, from the first laps of FP1 to the last lap of the race, in good shape. Except the last two laps of Q3 on both cars, and it’s probably where we missed something.”

“The window is very narrow, and as soon as you are a bit out, quickly you lose two or three tenths. And today in F1 [in] the top eight, two or three tenths can be a sixth position.”

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Pace was there, grid position was not

Leclerc recovered from fourth to finish second behind Antonelli, 13 seconds adrift. Hamilton came home fourth, roughly a second shy of Max Verstappen’s Red Bull on the final podium step. Ferrari actually outscored Mercedes by a single point on the day, 30 to 29.

Vasseur widened the diagnosis beyond raw car speed in his comments to Crash.net, pointing to how little separates the top teams when every variable has to land in the right place.

“Competitiveness is not just about the package; it’s also the fact that sometimes set-up, tyre management, you are in the right spot, and you are doing a good weekend.”

Mexico, altitude and the engine issue

The Mexico City Grand Prix on Sunday, 1 November, now becomes the immediate test of whether Austin was a one-off or a pattern. The Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez sits at roughly 2,285 meters above sea level, where the air is about a fifth thinner, and that puts unusual stress on cooling, the power unit and aerodynamics alike.

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Vasseur, previewing the round, warned that Mexico will be the most demanding weekend of the year on cooling, and that Ferrari will arrive with a low-downforce package for the first time, after years of running maximum wing at the circuit. He has already said he expects drivers to spend much of first practice chasing grip rather than lap time.

That matters because of a deficit Ferrari has not tried to hide. At Monza in September, Vasseur conceded that “at the end, we are missing pure power” against Mercedes, and nothing visible since has closed the gap. Thin air penalizes every engine. It penalizes one that is already short of power the hardest.

The title Ferrari cannot catch

Antonelli’s Austin win stretched his lead over Mercedes team-mate George Russell to 123 points, with Hamilton third in the drivers’ standings on 241 and Leclerc fifth on 233. The Italian needs only two more points in Mexico to clinch his first world championship, which would be sealed with a ninth-place finish or better.

Mercedes also lead the constructors’ standings on 607 points, 133 clear of Ferrari on 474 after 18 rounds. Four races remain. The arithmetic has not quite closed, but the margin is such that Ferrari’s realistic fight for the rest of the season is for second.

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Lights out at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez is on Sunday, 1 November.

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