Charles Leclerc expresses his confidence in the leadership of Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur ahead of the Maranello based outfit’s 2024 Formula 1 campaign.
Despite a far from ideal first season at the helm of Ferrari, team principal Fred Vasseur has garnered the support of the team’s star driver Charles Leclerc. The young Monegasque driver lauded Vasseur’s leadership and vision for the future of the team.
“With Fred, I obviously have a lot of discussions,” Leclerc told selected media at Maranello after the launch of the SF-24. “I’m completely on board with the long-term and mid-term vision that he has for the team. That also gave me the confidence in believing in the project for the future.”
When asked about Vasseur’s leadership, Leclerc noted that there are many small changes which have been made within the team in which you can feel his influence. He also shied away from comparing the leadership of Vasseur to that of his predecessor Mattia Binotto who moved on from the team following a four year stint as team principal ending in 2022.
Leclerc highlighted Vassuer’s focus on the inner workings of the team, rather than the media frenzy often associated with Ferrari, as a key point of his leadership style.
“To go into the specifics of exactly how things changed is more difficult, because it’s just a different way of working with Fred,” Leclerc said. “There are so many particularities that are different. [He is] very, very clear in what he wants to achieve and in the directions he gives to the team, which I think is a good thing.
“Without going into a comparison of the past and now, I think one really good thing about Fred is that he doesn’t really care about the outside talk around the team. He’s very much focused on what needs to be done within the team. He’s very straight to the point and I think that is a strength of Fred’s. I really like this way of working.”
Following a difficult 2023 season in which the team’s SF-23 failed to consistently challenge for podiums, Leclerc says the progress made in the latter half of last season, which saw Carlos Sainz secure the only non Red Bull victory of the year, gives the team reason to be optimistic.
“I’ve felt this feeling for six months already,” He said. “Six months ago, since we started that second part of the season, there was a really big motivation from the whole team. I remember very clearly the moment we ran our particular test in Zandvoort in the free practices, we came back from Zandvoort and we all sat down and we had very clear results in front of our eyes.
“That gave a huge motivation to the team because we were like, ‘okay, so now we understand what are the weak points of the car, where we need to work, which direction we need to take’. And from that moment onwards, everybody has been fully on board with the directions that we have been taking. Everything made sense.
“After three or four races we brought a new floor in Japan and straight away it was a step forward. In terms of sensitivities with the wind, but also in terms of the front, I speak very often about wanting a strong front and that was a step forward as well.”
Leclerc, clearly excited by the prospect of a competitive SF-24, says his optimism is based on the progress the team has made over the past six months. With the SF-24, the first car designed under the leadership of Vasseur, claimed to have ironed out many of the weaknesses of the SF-23, Leclerc has high hopes for the future of Ferrari.
“I really hope that this car can follow up the momentum that we’ve had since the second part of last year,” He said. “But I don’t think it’s a new optimism right now – I think it already started six months ago – but it’s a good thing to see and it’s exciting for the future.”
