New Ferrari boss Fred Vasseur believes the team has everything it needs to win
New Ferrari F1 team boss Fred Vasseur believes Ferrari still has everything necessary to be race winners, including team structure.
The Scuderia appointed Vasseur after Mattia Binotto tendered his resignation following the 2022 campaign.
Charles Leclerc headed the drivers’ championship in the early stages, and Ferrari the constructors’ competition, only for both to be overhauled as the year wore on.
That garnered a negative response in the Italian press, despite proving a significant improvement on the operation’s 2021 effort.
There were, however, points that needed improvement.
Reliability was a weak point and strategically there were mistakes that cost its drivers championship points.
They are concerns that now belong to Vasseur, who joined from Sauber at the start of the month.
“I’m really convinced that Ferrari today – and my experience is limited to the last two weeks – that we have everything to win,” he said.
“We have to put everything together, do a good job, but we have everything to be able to win.
“Then you can have a look at the results of the last decade, the wheel is always running, and it’s just a matter of continuous improvement for me.
“That if we are doing a better job than the others in a couple of months or years that we will be able to win.
“It’s not that anything is set in stone.
“If you look at some teams that were in a very dominant situation a couple of years ago and they are nowhere today.
“You don’t have to take a direction that it was like this [for] the last decade, the last 20 years, and it will stay like this for the next 40 years.
“F1 is a changing world and we just have to be focused on the job, on the performance, and everything is possible.”
Vasseur reports to Ferrari CEO, Benedetto Vigna, who in turn reports to John Elkann, the company Chairman.
It is believed Binotto has a strained relationship with his superiors with his appointment made under former CEO Sergio Marchionne’s rule.
“On this point, the situation is quite clear,” Vasseur said of his position within the team structure.
“The Gestione Sportiva, the team, is part of the bigger organisation of Ferrari.
“I have a CEO, and it’s Benedetto Vigna, and I have a Chairman for the company, and the situation is crystal clear.
“But even at Sauber I had to report to the Chairman of the group. You have always a boss. It’s not a new situation for me.
“Now I am running the team, I have the delegation to do it, and I will run it as I want.
“We have enough discussions with Benedetto and John [Elkann] on a daily basis to discuss the key points. This is crystal clear and it’s working perfectly.
“At the end of the day, what I have found is that I have a very direct relationship with Benedetto,” he added.
“We have dinner two or three times a week, and then on the phone every single day.
“The organisation of the team, at the end of the day, doesn’t matter whether it’s communication or commercial, [whether it is] reporting to the group or to me.
“If we have sole, direct collaboration, it will work.”
Ferrari will launch its 2023 car on February 14, just over a week before it will be in action for pre-season testing in Bahrain on February 23-25.
Keyword: Vasseur believes Ferrari has ‘everything needed to win’