A double-DNF in Canada was central to Ferrari’s failure to win the 2024 constructors’ championship, but team principal Fred Vasseur says the response to such difficulties bodes well for the future.
Ferrari lost out to McLaren by 14 points in the constructors’ fight, missing out on a chance to win the championship for the first time since 2008. Vasseur says the overall team performance was a clear sign of Ferrari’s progress compared to the previous season but Canada stands out as the particularly costly weekend after failing to score.
“For sure it’s a bit of a mixed feeling, because I think that we did a good step forward compared to 2023, I would say on every single pillar.” Vasseur said. “Reliability was better, the strategy was good, pit stops went well, the performance was there. We scored 60 percent more points than one year ago; we have five wins against one. I think [by all metrics], it’s green.
“The only [negative] is that we finished the season 14 points behind McLaren. Again it’s not in Abu Dhabi that we lost something. On average during the season, I think McLaren scored 26, 27 points per weekend, and we scored more than this in Abu Dhabi. It’s probably more in Canada with double zero, or the summertime when we struggled a little bit — Spain, UK, Austria.
“We struggled here, and in this period of four races, we lost something like 80 or 90 points on McLaren. They also have their downsides to the season. It’s like this when you have four teams fighting, that you are always up and down. You have a kind of frustration the Sunday evening in Abu Dhabi when you are 14 points behind McLaren. Over 600 [points each], it’s not that much.
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“If you have a look at this season, the first race that came to my mind when I said, ‘OK we are 14 points behind,’ it’s Canada. Canada we had the double zero with a reliability issue on Charles [Leclerc’s car] and I think a race incident for Carlos [Sainz], and I think that McLaren didn’t have [any].
“McLaren had a race incident with [Oscar] Piastri, but … they score points, and when you are in this kind of fight with four teams, if you score zero-zero it’s quite tough to come back, which means that reliability is key and we have to avoid the crashes. We had one or two crashes, but in this kind of championship that is too much.”
Despite the race in Montreal standing out to Vasseur, he was also impressed by Ferrari’s response as it fought back from a run of disappointing races to get so close to winning the title. Not only did it show a strong understanding of the car’s problems, he says it’s reflective of a shift in culture within Maranello.
“I think the approach this year, as a team, was very good, even when we had the tough June, July,” he said. “The reaction from the team, as a team, was very good. We never blame someone or [any] department; we work together to come back, we work together to find solutions between the different groups, and it went well.
“You can always say that it would have been better to not have the issue, but I think the reaction was good, and it’s what we are also expecting for the future if we want to fight for the championship. And yes, it’s part of what we want to have.
“When you are trying to fix a goal for the team it’s to work as a team, to act as a team, to not blame someone when we have issues. It’s easy to say, but it’s not easy to do when you have the pressure of the result and the pressure of the races. I was not there before — I can’t judge on the past — but I was very proud of the reaction of the team this year.”