Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur believes Red Bull can be caught this season due to the development race but that finding consistency is his current priority.
Red Bull has started 2023 in fine form, with back-to-back one-two finishes and one win and one pole position apiece for Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez. Despite Ferrari struggling at stages in the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, Vasseur says he feels the gap to Red Bull can be closed, although he doesn’t want his team to get distracted by the deficit.
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“I think so,” Vasseur said. “We have to continue to push. I think it’s not the right attitude to think about the gap, to think will we be able to close the gap and so on. We have to be focused on ourselves, that we know when we are weak, and we have to improve on this one. We will see what is the outcome, when we’ll do a decent step.
“But I think if you start to think about what could be the future potential and with development and so on, you are lost. We know that we have to improve, but I think it’s the DNA of our sport. It’s not just due to the DNA of the current situation, we know that we have to work and we’ll continue, and be sure that (after a race) I’ll be in the office and push like hell.”
And Vasseur says there are likely to be some new parts delivered by Ferrari ahead of this weekend’s Australian Grand Prix but that they won’t necessarily address the biggest weakness the team currently has.
“I think we’ll have some small updates coming next week in Australia. But it’s honestly again, I don’t think that it’s coming from the potential. The main issue that we have is to always – all over the weekend – be able to do our maximum. But it’s not the case, we were not able to extract 100% of the car in every single session. It means that we have to be focused on this before thinking about updates.
“I think every single team of the grid, we are bringing updates every single weekend. We have the declaration to the FIA on the Thursday morning, and you can see that every single team is bringing updates, and we’ll continue to do it. It’s not because we are not performing or we are performing that we will change the plan.
“The updates that you will see in Australia, the parts are already in the production. It’s not that I will come back to the factory and say ‘guys, we have to push, that we will have updates in Australia’. It’s not working like this.”