Photo credits: Scuderia Ferrari
Scuderia Ferrari are currently P4 in the 2023 F1 Constructors’ Championship. The famous Prancing Horse is over 300 points behind championship leader Oracle Red Bull Racing – 312 to be precise. Despite this, Ferrari’s team principal Fred Vasseur believes that his team need only make “small steps everywhere” to be back at the front in the pinnacle of motorsport.
Scuderia Ferrari started the 2022 F1 season in an upward trajectory with several wins. Although the team’s tile challenge fell away during last year, there was still an expectation that they could mount a genuine title challenge in 2023. Unfortunately, for those who follow the team in red, teammates Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc, only have a combined total of three podiums from the first 12 Grands Prix of the season. Meanwhile, the charging Red Bull has left the prancing horse in its dust by winning all 2023 Grands Prix to date.
Scuderia Ferrari’s Team Principal Fred Vasseur (the team’s fifth Team Principal in the last ten years) was the man many hoped would bring direction to the team, get a grip on strategy and fix pitstops. Instead, Vasseur had to cope with several key figures departing such as Senior Design Engineer David Sanchez who will ply his craft at McLaren. As well as this, Racing Director Laurent Mekies already left the team at the end of July after four-and-a-half seasons, to prepare to lead AlphaTauri in 2024. Vasseur has revealed “some people will be joining us in a couple of months” while other new members of the team will start in January 2024, with more to follow in 2025.
Even with such upheaval, Scuderia Ferrari claimed one of their 2023 podiums at Spa-Francorchamps at the Belgian Grand Prix prior to the summer shutdown. As a result of this, there is every chance that Ferrari could still gain ground on their rivals in the standings and even spring a surprise or two before season’s end.
Fred Vasseur spoke to select media ahead of this weekend’s outing in Zandvoort when F1 returns to action after the enforced summer shutdown. In comments published by motorsportweek.com, the man hopeful for a Ferrari resurgence reflected on the might of Oracle Red Bull Racing and predicted what would be needed to set the pace once again.
“I’m not sure they [Red Bull] have one area in which they are so much better than everyone else,” claimed Vasseur. “We’ve already had this discussion, it’s not a joke, so it’s not a matter of concept or anything like this, I think they’re performing in every single pillar of the performance: drivers, chassis, engine, aerodynamics, suspension, strategy, and that’s why we have to improve.
“I think it would be a mistake to think, ‘okay, they are much better than us in this area, let’s go for a full push on this one.’ We have to try and get the best out of what we have in every single area, and to do small steps everywhere. We’re talking about 0.2s and it’s not 0.2s in aero, I think it’s more one hundred times 0.002s or 10 times 0.02s,” said Vasseur.
Even though it is known that new ideas and creative thinking will be joining Ferrari over the coming months, Vasseur made clear to media in attendance: “I’ll never accept that we have to wait for these guys to get an improvement because I also trust the guys we have in the team.”
Scuderia Ferrari should be raring to go having ended the most recent race in a strong manner – for Charles Leclerc at least. The team also knows that it is vital that they “have to be focused on trying to get the best out of what we have” if they wish to continue their change in form. Due to this, Vasseur made clear that he does not want to postpone any target “because that would be the wrong message, the wrong motivation.”
The man leading Scuderia Ferrari’s F1 challenge described the evolution of his team as ‘a never-ending process’. By Vasseur’s own admission, just by changing the personnel with three, five or ten people in the next 18 months does not mean that they will completely change the philosophy and the potential of the team. However, should Scuderia Ferrari not make the right choices in the coming months then Red Bull Racing may very well have a never-ending run of success for many seasons to come.
