Team principal Fred Vasseur says he will be continuously evolving and improving the structure at Ferrari to stop the team falling behind rivals.
Ferrari has not won a Formula 1 championship for over 15 years and Vasseur was brought in as team principal to replace Mattia Binotto over the winter, despite the team finishing second to Red Bull last season. While he’s been in the role for seven months now, Vasseur says there is no final structure he has in mind but instead he wants the team to be more fluid and responsive in order to progress.
“We are miles away because when you are doing my job, you don’t have to imagine that there is a perfect structure,” Vasseur said. “You need to be permanently forward, basically — you always need to improve and always need to change things. If you stay with the same structure two years in a row then you are dead because all the others will improve. But it means that I don’t have a clear picture to say I have to do this, full stop, and it will work — it would be stupid.
“We will make some changes in the coming weeks, in the coming months, in the coming years because some topics are a bit longer than some others but it’s a permanent evolution and permanent improvement.”
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With Ferrari currently fourth in the constructors’ standings and yet to win a race this year, Vasseur believes that if it’s bad for Formula 1 that Max Verstappen is dominating so much, then it’s on the other teams to improve — although he hints both Red Bull drivers should be closer given the same machinery.
“We have to do, collectively, a better job,” he declared. “It’s not that Max is damaging something. Max is doing a fantastic job, Red Bull is doing a fantastic job and it’s just that we have to do a better job. We can’t complain about Max or Red Bull.
“It’s quite impossible to split between driver and team or cars. The driver is also developing the car, is also setting up the car — that is part of the performance of the car. Now, for sure when you see the result that race after race that there is a big difference between the two teammates (it’s unusual) but this is not my issue, it is the issue of Red Bull.”