Ferrari Team Principal Fred Vasseur believes the meticulous approach and valuable experience of Lewis Hamilton will help close performance gaps with Red Bull and Mercedes in 2025.
A fresh perspective in Maranello
With the 2024 season coming to an end last weekend in Yas Marina, it’s now time for teams to concentrate on what’s coming up in the new year.
And with regulations staying the same the biggest changes are on the drivers’ lineups.
The swap of the season is undoubtedly Lewis Hamilton leaving Mercedes- after 11 years and 6 world championships – to become Charles Leclerc’s new teammate at Ferrari.
Bringing with him so much experience and expertise, Ferrari Team Principal Fred Vasseur is sure his arrival will be an interesting turning point for the team, bringing in a new and diverse point of view.
Something that has been lacking around Ferrari’s Headquarters.
“I think it’s always important to have people coming from other teams with a different culture,” he said in Abu Dhabi.
“It’s nothing to do against Italians or English or whatever. It’s just that we are in a business where the transfer of know-how is important and as Ferrari, we are a bit isolated.”
A winning mindset to drive improvement
“But it will be a good push for us. It’s already the case because we were recruited a little bit to some other team. I think it’s a good push because you see it a bit differently.”
A new perspective and winning mindset that Vasseur is sure will bring a lot of value in Maranello.
“I’m convinced that Lewis will come with his own experience, with the background of 18 years in F1 or 17. With a couple of titles and so on. It will be a good push to keep this mindset, to try to do a bit better everywhere.”
“Not to imagine that the performance is coming from the others into the team. It’s not that the performance is coming just from my hero or whatever. It’s coming from everybody and this is important.”
The devil is in the details
Vasseur had already crossed paths with a young Lewis Hamilton exactly in the years before his big McLaren debut.
The Brit made his rise through the junior categories with ART Grand Prix, a team funded by Vasseur alongside Nicholas Todt.
Driving for them Hamilton won the 2006 GP2 Series title, from which he was promoted to Formula 1 the next year.
“I perfectly remember Lewis in 2006, that he was already like this, pushing on small details,” recalled Vasseur.
Small details that is what Ferrari is missing to do better than this year’s disappointing second place in the constructors.
“At the end of the day, if you have a look, I think average, the delta between McLaren and us, perhaps in qualification, is a couple of hundreds.”
“And we are really at this stage, it’s true also with Red Bull and Mercedes, that we are speaking about details coming from 100 topics of the car.”
And who better than Sir Lewis Hamilton to bring this detail oriented mindset?
“We really need to have this kind of mindset to chase the last 1,000 on every single area. And I think Lewis will be a good asset for this also.”
