Ferrari’s new team principal Frederic Vasseur says the team has everything it needs to win the world championship in his first year in charge.
The new man leading Formula 1’s most famous team has begun a review of its operations considering the problems which undermined its 2022 campaign.
Ferrari won two of the first three races last season under Vasseur’s predecessor, Mattia Binotto, raising hopes it would deliver world championship success for the first time since 2008. But a combination of poor reliability, a slowing development rate plus strategic and operational errors by the team allowed rivals Red Bull and Max Verstappen to take dominant wins in the two championships.
Within a week of the season finale in Abu Dhabi, Ferrari approached the then-Alfa Romeo team principal to take over from Binotto. Vasseur duly joined the Scuderia on January 9th.
Speaking to selected media including RaceFans yesterday, for the first time since taking charge at Ferrari, Vasseur said progress towards addressing the problems which undermined its 2022 campaign was already being made.
“I joined a bit more than two weeks ago and as you can imagine on some topics, it’s a very long process,” he explained. “I’m speaking mainly about the engine. I think and I hope that it’s under control today, that they did a good job over the last couple of months and this is one part of the equation.”
Ferrari brought no new parts to last year’s car after the Japanese Grand Prix as they reached the spending limit imposed by the budget cap. As a result the team slipped behind Red Bull and came under greater pressure from Mercedes over the second half of the season.
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Vasseur said he would not criticise the strategic decisions made before he arrived. “Development very often is a strategic choice now with the cost cap, to decide if you want to be more focussed on the new car – the car of the year after – or the current one,” he acknowledged. “But I was not there and I don’t want to make any judgement of what’s happened in the past. We’ll see during the season.”
Tactical errors were blamed for a series of defeats Ferrari suffered during 2022. Vasseur believes improvements may be made by changing how the existing team functions rather than replacing individuals.
“When you are speaking about strategy or…
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