Last Updated on May 28 2024, 11:44 am

Ferrari last won the Formula One constructors’ title back in 2008 which was the year McLaren claimed their last drivers’ championship with Lewis Hamilton in his second year in the sport. A little known fact is that was the  first year in F1 history that all the teams retained the same drivers throughout the season.

The team boss of the Scuderia was Stefano Domenicali who now is CEO of the Liberty Media operating company which manages the commercial rights of the sport. Domenicali was the last boss of the Italian team to serve a tenure of some length and following his retirement from the role in 2014, there have been four team principals including the present boss Fred Vasseur.

 

 

 

Vasseur Ferrari appointment a ‘head scratcher’

The latest casualty of the Ferrari car company’s hierarchy decision to change the F1 team’s leadership was Mattia Binotto who was a life long Ferrari man joining the company straight from university and quickly proved to be a brilliant engineer.

Yet his technical prowess were seen to quickly out weight his people management skills and a very public disagreement with Charles Leclerc following Ferrari strategy blunders which cost the Monegasque victory in Silverstone in 2022 are the reason many believe he was ‘’relieved’ of his duties come the end of the year.

For many the appointment of Fred Vasseur to the top Ferrari job was a ‘head scratcher’ given the Frenchman at the time was running the often back of the grid Sauber F1 squad. Could he stand the pressure from all of Italy who demand success from Ferrar who they treat as highly as their national football team. Fred’s background was in GP2, winning titles with both Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton when he headed up the ART Racing team.

Vasseur joined F1 relatively late in his career when he was appointed as team principal to the newly acquired Renault F1 works outfit in 2016. Fred is a man of few words but when he makes an assertion, its usually worth listening to. Mostly the Ferrari boss is self demeaning and uses humour to deflect the difficult media questions, so now he claims this years championships battles are truly on is because he has good reason to think so.

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‘Max made more mistakes than in 3 years’

Following the recent Monaco Grand Prix where Max failed to claim a record 9th consecutive pole position, the boss of the Scuderia claimed the world champion driver made more mistakes that weekend than in the last three years.

Red Bull have been dominant since the introduction of the new ground effect car regulations in 2022 and such was the margin of their success, most F1 observers believed this would continue through until the next big regulation change in 2026. Yet Ferrari and McLaren have proven them wrong chipping away at the world champions advantage with the result of Carlos Sainz victorious the year in Melbourne, Lando Norris in Miami and of course Charles Leclerc at his home race in the recent Monaco GP.

Of course Max has four wins from the first seven of the season, but he was vulnerable in Imola with Mclaren’s Norris pushing him head all the way to the chequered flag. This apparent Red Bull vulnerability has emboldened the Ferrari boss to make the kind of claims he has always resisted.

“I don’t want to draw any conclusions about this weekend,” says Vasseur adding, “but if you look at the last two or three weekends, I think Max made more mistakes in Imola than in the last three seasons.”

“If you can stay in your comfort zone every time with the strategy and everything else, you don’t make mistakes. They [Red Bull] were in that situation, but now they have to push more.”

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Red Bull under pressure too

Red Bull made a strategic error in Monaco starting Max Verstappen on the hard tyre from his qualifying grid slot of P6. Yet history tells us that early in this race there is often a safety car or red flag, which takes away the advantage of running further into the race for those starting on the hardest of the Pirelli compounds.

Speaking of the increasing number of mistakes from the F1 world champions, Vasseur observes, “We just didn’t see them, it became evident because they hadn’t been forced to go to the limit,” Fred told assembled media in the principality. 

“I think last year they had a very decent gap that sometimes we were able to fight with them for the quali. But in the race average it was four or five tenths [per lap].

“That means that when you have four or five tenths of difference. You are not really at risk,” explained the boss of the Scuderia. The sheer dominance of the Red Bull car with ax at the wheel was evident last year in Jeddah where the Red Bull driver failed to get his last push lap in qualifying in so started the race P9.

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Canada too may serve up problems for RBR

Vasseur notes the utter dominance of Max in the RB20 was such that in Austrian his lead was so great he had time to pit before the last lap, fit fresh tyres, and claim the fastest lap of the race. The Ferrari boss notes, “And in these conditions, even if you do a mistake, it’s not obvious. This season it’s not the case anymore.

“It’s not the case with us but it’s not the case between Red Bull and McLaren because McLaren is closer and from this fight we have to get the best.”

Of course Ferrari’s head honcho does not expect Red Bull to lie down and give up the ghost. “They will come back,” he says, “they will be back quickly and be strong. I’m not considering at all that everything will be easy until the end.”

Looking forward to F1’s return to Canada in just under two weeks time, Vasseur believes we are in for another exciting race despite the circuit configuration being hugely different from Monaco.

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Vasseur confidently predicts title fight to season’s end

“Canada, it’s probably almost the opposite of Monaco in terms of speed and force but you have also the characteristic of the kerbs with a lot of low speed corners, chicane and so on, some corners similar to Monaco.”

The surface in Montreal has been recovered since the F1 circus was last in town, so the historic data the teams have collected on how the tyre compounds react with the asphalt is of no use. Over the last two years Ferrari were only strong at tracks where low speed corner traction was critical, but Fred believes this has changed citing “how we performed in Melbourne, we did well in Imola, in Miami we also went well,” which all are significantly different in configuration.

The boldest claim in Fred Vasseur’s interview were saved to the end as he now predicts there will be a battle for the twoF1 titles this year and no Red Bull runaway victories.

“With different tyre compounds, different types of tarmac and different layouts, we did quite well. I think it will remain exciting until the end [of the season],” asserts the newly confident boss of the iconic F1 red team.

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Wolff rebukes Hamilton’ favouritism’ claims

Lewis Hamilton made the extraordinary announcement prior to the start of this season that he was leaving for Ferrari next year, despite having declared months earlier a new two year contract with Mercedes. With such a long lead time before his departure it was always going to be the case that the team transitioned to functioning without the seven times champions input.

Though it may be the team are breathing a collective sigh of relief given Hamilton’s threats of last season where he publicly called for “accountability” and questioned why the design team had “not listened” to his comments on the problems with their 2022 W13.   READ MORE