Ferrari takes great pride in response to title blows – Vasseur

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 …

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.”

Ferrari and Hamilton face critical preparations ahead of 2025 – Vasseur

Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur says Lewis Hamilton will need to lean on his experience as he is faced with a challenging stint to be fully prepared for his debut with the team in 2025. Hamilton will join Ferrari next season after bringing his …

Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur says Lewis Hamilton will need to lean on his experience as he is faced with a challenging stint to be fully prepared for his debut with the team in 2025.

Hamilton will join Ferrari next season after bringing his time with Mercedes to an end, marking only the second team move of his Formula 1 career and the first time he will race outside of a Mercedes-powered team. With pre-season testing beginning on Feb. 26 and Ferrari launching its 2025 car a week earlier, Vasseur says there’s only a small window for Hamilton become embedded within the Scuderia.

“It’s always a challenge, starting from the beginning of January until the launch of the season on the 18th of February in London, and we will do the [2024 car] launch the 19th in Maranello,” Vasseur said. “It means it’s critical that you have only six weeks — it’s not easy. But he’s also coming with his own experience — he’s not Rookie of the Year — so I’m not worried at all about this.

“It’s also the continuity of the previous regulations and that means we have some reference. I’m not worried, but it’s true that it’s a challenge. If you imagine that you could go to Bahrain and have a sandstorm, as we had a couple of years ago, it’s tough, but it’s tough for everybody on the grid. We know that we have only three days there.”

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Ferrari plans on running Hamilton during some testing of previous car (TPC) days, but a firm date for a first outing has not been set due to uncertainty over the weather in January. Vasseur says there will be no specific public welcoming event for the seven-time world champion, such is the need to spend time preparing for the opening rounds.

“We have to be focused on the season,” he said. “As we said before, it will be a very tight period between the first day and launch — it’s a matter of weeks and I want to have everybody focus on performance.

“It means that we will have the launch of the championship, we will have the launch of the car. For me, it’s already two events, and it’s far too much! I want to be focused on development, performance and not to do the show.”

Ferrari’s Vasseur says fan response vindicates F1’s rescheduling calls in Brazil

Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur says the fan response to the amended schedule at the Sao Paulo Grand Prix shows Formula 1 and the FIA made the right choices. Heavy rain and thunderstorms led to qualifying being postponed from Saturday to Sunday …

Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur says the fan response to the amended schedule at the Sao Paulo Grand Prix shows Formula 1 and the FIA made the right choices.

Heavy rain and thunderstorms led to qualifying being postponed from Saturday to Sunday morning, and with another worrying forecast for Sunday afternoon the race itself was pulled forward by 90 minutes. That led to a 7:30am qualifying session that saw Lando Norris take pole before Max Verstappen’s stunning victory, and Vasseur says the queues of fans waiting to get in reminded him it was the right call for those attending.

“We can’t complain,” Vasseur said. “At the end of the day, we were able to do the race. I think the race was a good one. What we have to keep in mind is that when I came at 5am there were already thousands of fans outside and at least for them it’s important to do the job.

“For sure, the conditions were not ideal for the team, for everybody, but at the end of the day it was the only option to do the race and I think it was a good one.”

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Charles Leclerc’s fifth place helped limit the damage in the constructors’ championship between Ferrari and McLaren, but the Monegasque blamed himself for setup choices hurting his pace, something Vasseur disagrees with.

“He’s always the first one to blame himself but I’m not sure he’s in charge of the setup. It was a difficult Sunday, but I think overall it’s not a dramatic weekend. And it’s more on some choices that it was quite difficult to anticipate, things like the pit stop. You can say at the end of the day if you stay on track and you are waiting for the red flag it’s the right call, but if you crash you look stupid.

“Honestly, these kinds of weekends are quite difficult to manage from the pit wall and the car; but it’s more the pace and the setup because the pace was really difficult. We were seven tenths [of a second] slower than Norris at the beginning of the stint and probably six or seven tenths faster than him at the end.”

Ferrari’s Vasseur believes F1 constructors fight will be decided in the details

Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur believes there will be “a real fight” for the constructors’ championship until the end of the season given the fluctuations in form among teams. McLaren took the championship lead after Oscar Piastri’s victory in …

Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur believes there will be “a real fight” for the constructors’ championship until the end of the season given the fluctuations in form among teams.

McLaren took the championship lead after Oscar Piastri’s victory in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, with Lando Norris’s fourth helping the team to leapfrog Red Bull at the top of the standings. Ferrari had taken pole through Charles Leclerc but finished second, and the collision between Carlos Sainz and Sergio Perez leaves it 51 points adrift McLaren and 31 behind Red Bull. Vasseur expects more twists and turns in the battle.

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“The next race will be different because it’s the same type of corner but with much more downforce, so it’s another scenario,” Vasseur said. “But it’s true that the delta between cars, perhaps Baku aside but if you look at Monza, in Spa, in Budapest, you quite often have six or seven cars within one tenth or a tenth and a half.

“The classification is probably linked to the upgrades we are bringing or to the characteristics of the track, and I think it’s more the characteristics of the track than something else. It will be up and down until the end of the season.

“But what is important, probably where we failed [in Baku], is to win when you are in good shape but also to score good points when you are not, because we will have ups and downs until the end of the season and it’s always important to score good points when we are not in good shape.

“We failed in Canada, the UK and Austria this year and it’s probably costing us a lot. But we are back on the pace, we are back to fighting for pole position each weekend, to fight for the win, and we still have 300 points on the table until the end of the season, something like this. That means everything is possible and it will be a real fight. [Baku] didn’t turn in our direction, but we will have better weekends.”

Ferrari’s recent run of form that has delivered a win at Monza and a second in Azerbaijan comes after it introduced an upgrade in Italy, and Vasseur said a combination of new parts and tweaking set-ups with older specifications will be central to the fight.

“I think it’s true for us, but it’s true for everybody, that each single upgrade that we want to bring to the car, we are already on the edge of the performance, the bouncing and so on,” he said. “So we have to pay attention. But we can’t stay like we are either, because everybody is pushing and developing, even if it’s difficult. If we look at the grid of Monza, we had five cars in one tenth, and that means every single bit will make a huge difference.”

Getting the most out of weaker weekends key to Ferrari’s title hopes – Vasseur

Fred Vasseur believes Ferrari overreacted to its problems during a tough run of races mid-season and that not doing so in future will be crucial to the outcome of the constructors’ championship. Ferrari was just 24 points behind Red Bull in the …

Fred Vasseur believes Ferrari overreacted to its problems during a tough run of races mid-season and that not doing so in future will be crucial to the outcome of the constructors’ championship.

Ferrari was just 24 points behind Red Bull in the constructors’ championship after Charles Leclerc’s victory in Monaco, but failed to score with both cars in Canada and picked up just 50 points across the following three rounds in Spain, Austria and Silverstone. With a car failing to score on two occasions in that spell, Vasseur says maximizing the points return from uncompetitive weekends will be crucial as Ferrari chases McLaren and Red Bull.

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“We had a first part of the season where Red Bull was flying, then we had a good sequence for us with two or three wins, and then it was McLaren and now it’s Mercedes – or Mercedes and McLaren – overall I think the four teams did a similar job,” Vasseur said. “It’s not quite often that after 12 or 13 races you can have four teams in a position to win the championship.

“I’m not a big fan of statistics but we scored something like 60% more points than one year ago after 12 or 13 races and the gap with Red Bull last year was [big] – we reduced the gap by something like 300% on Red Bull and I think it’s the interest part of the championship, going into Zandvoort… 

“Honestly on Friday morning [in Spa] I would have bet on Max [Verstappen], even starting on P11, that he was flying, and then in the afternoon for me it was obvious that it would be McLaren. In the end, we took the pole and Mercedes won the race! It’s a good summary of the season and a good summary of the championship this year.

“I think the most difficult probably in this championship is not to do a one-two when you have the best car, it’s to score good points when you are not. It’s where we failed as a team in UK, Spain, Canada – this part of the season we struggled a little bit more and sometimes we overreacted as a team and we lost too many points at this stage.”

Ferrari’s poor run also coincided with an upgrade in Barcelona that didn’t perform as expected, but the team bounced back with 43 points across the two rounds before the summer break. Ahead of a race weekend at Zandvoort that he’s warned that is likely to be a case of damage limitation, Vasseur says it’s a complex challenge to effectively improve car performance, with small gains having a big impact.

“On one hand we are convinced – and it’s obvious – that for one tenth, or a tenth and a half, you completely change the philosophy of the weekend. This means that we are all pushing to bring parts and you know that the correlation between what we are doing at the factory and the track for the bouncing is not an easy one.

“It was not easy for Mercedes, it was not easy for us, it was not easy for other teams since the beginning of the season. And we are also on the edge of the development, I think we’ve had the same regulations for [three] years now and we have a kind of asymptote of performance. It’s more and more difficult to change the last tenth of a second, we are a bit more on the limit and it’s true for everybody.

“We have to police ourselves on the fact that bouncing is key. It’s not just a matter of performance but mainly a matter of confidence of the drivers. It means that if you gain one tenth due to downforce and you are losing three tenths in the confidence or the consistency of the drivers then at the end of the day the P&L (profit and loss) is negative.”

Ferrari focuses development efforts on resolving bouncing issue

Ferrari is working on an upgrade to its 2024 to try and resolve the bouncing issue that has surfaced since a package introduced at the Spanish Grand Prix. The previous major upgrade package introduced by Ferrari at Imola provided a step forward that …

Ferrari is working on an upgrade to its 2024 to try and resolve the bouncing issue that has surfaced since a package introduced at the Spanish Grand Prix.

The previous major upgrade package introduced by Ferrari at Imola provided a step forward that allowed it to be in the mix for victory at the following two races, with Charles Leclerc winning from pole position in Monaco. However, a further update in Spain has led to problems with bouncing that are impacting performance, and while Vasseur is confident the team has identified the cause, he believes new parts will be needed to address it.

“[It’s] an aero problem, yes, because we changed only aero parts and the bouncing appeared in Spain,” Vasseur said. “To fix it, you have tons of solutions. You have solutions with a compromise on performance. You have solutions without compromise on performance, developing new packages… [and] I think we are there now.

“We’ll have to deal perhaps next race with the current car, and the sooner the better, we’ll bring an upgrade with less bouncing.”

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Ferrari could revert to its pre-Barcelona specification of car for this weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix, but Vasseur says he has no concerns about the team’s wind tunnel correlation despite the latest obstacle.

“Correlation is OK. The correlation on the downforce is OK,” he said. “I think it’s still a question mark for everybody, that sometimes the bouncing is popping up like this.”

“It’s quite difficult to have a correlation because you don’t have the bouncing in the wind tunnel. I don’t want to go deep in detail, but we all have metrics. You can anticipate that you will have more bouncing with this part with another one, but to know if it will have a negative impact on the performance, it’s another story.”

Vasseur feels the latest setback should not overshadow an area that he believes has been a strength of Ferrari’s since he took over as team principal.

“The last 16 months now, all the upgrades that we brought had a very, very good correlation with what we did in the wind tunnel,: he said. “It was, I think, one of the assets of the team over the past year, to bring some small upgrades, and each time it was paying off. This one, we had an issue, but it’s not because we had an issue once that it’s the end of the world.”

Silverstone lessons will benefit Ferrari – Vasseur

Ferrari gained technical understanding at the British Grand Prix that should benefit it for the rest of the season, says team principal Fred Vasseur. An upgrade introduced at the Spanish Grand Prix led to an increase in bouncing that was impacting …

Ferrari gained technical understanding at the British Grand Prix that should benefit it for the rest of the season, says team principal Fred Vasseur.

An upgrade introduced at the Spanish Grand Prix led to an increase in bouncing that was impacting performance, with Ferrari trying to identify solutions over the following rounds in Austria and Great Britain. Vasseur says the team compromised the weekend at Silverstone – where Carlos Sainz was fifth and Charles Leclerc failed to score – to analyze the situation, and has made wider progress due to that choice.

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“It’s difficult to say this after the result, but I think we did a step forward [at Silverstone], at least on the technical side,” Vasseur said. “We have a much better understanding of the situation Sunday evening than Friday morning, and this I think is encouraging for the last part of the season.

“For sure the result is not ideal, but we compromised mainly the result [on Saturday], more than [Sunday]. Carlos did a solid race, that he was able to come back at Max [Verstappen] on the first stint and to stay 10 laps on Max’s gearbox, with mediums at the beginning of the race.

“And on Charles it’s a bit more chaotic, because he was stuck behind [Lance] Stroll, he lost 10 seconds, and when we had the first call for the pit stop, it was a bit on the edge. I think we collectively were a bit too aggressive.”

Despite the race results not being to Vasseur’s liking, he says it was a tough decision to focus on the longer-term during the Silverstone weekend, but a valuable one even though the weather further impacted that approach.

“I think we had exactly the same situation last year, almost at the same stage of the season – Silverstone, Budapest, Spa – and we stopped it in Zandvoort to do a complete scan of the situation, and we had a good recovery, because the weeks after we were there,” he said. “

“What is tough in this situation is that when you have an issue, you don’t have a proper test to fix it, or at least to understand it. And it’s quite difficult as a team sometimes to compromise or sacrifice a Friday session, when you know that you are losing a little bit of time during the weekend, and to say, ‘OK, let’s forget about FP1, FP2, be focused on mid-term’.

“Trust me, this decision as a team is very difficult, because you start the weekend, and it was even worse in Silverstone with the weather. It means that we put ourselves in a tough situation, but this we knew before. And it was even worse with the fact that the Saturday morning was with wet tires, that for sure it was not helpful, but we assumed the decision before the weekend, and I think it was the right call to do it.”

F1’s pecking order changes every race, says Ferrari’s Vasseur

Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur believes there is no clear pecking order among the top four teams this season and is not overly concerned by the Scuderia’s performance in the Spanish Grand Prix. Victory in Monaco for Charles Leclerc was followed …

Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur believes there is no clear pecking order among the top four teams this season and is not overly concerned by the Scuderia’s performance in the Spanish Grand Prix.

Victory in Monaco for Charles Leclerc was followed by both drivers failing to reach Q3 or finish the race in Canada, but Ferrari recovered to lock out the third row and finish fifth and sixth in Spain. With both Mercedes drivers in front, though, and Max Verstappen and Lando Norris some 20 seconds ahead, Ferrari wasn’t in the mix for victory but Vasseur says small details on each track change the picture significantly.

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“We were 5 thousands off the Mercs [in qualifying], I think it’s a gust of wind or something like this, and they were 40 seconds behind us in Monaco two weeks ago,” Vasseur said. “That means that before we draw any conclusions like this, we have to stay calm.

“We have to take event by event. I think next week it will be a completely different format, different tarmac, different type of corners also, and we will have another picture. Probably the picture will be completely different, favorable to us or not [I don’t know], but the picture will be completely different next week.

“Nothing is forever in F1 today. I’m not sure that over the last 10 years in F1 you can find four consecutive events with four different guys on pole position and four different teams. It means that it’s not crystal clear that one is better than the other one.”

Vasseur is also not viewing the Monaco victory as a one-off example of form having been close to winning in Imola, too, and he says the gaps in outright performance in qualifying are small enough to be overcome by set-up and track conditions.

“If we are winning in Singapore, Baku, Monaco and so on, it is not that bad, but on the other hand, I think we were a couple of times in the first four too. I am not sure that you can say today that there is a clear order of the grid. We will see next week.

“Perhaps next week you are right that it is clear now that the order is like this. But it will be like this also until the next upgrade or next modification. Or even next week you will have a low-speed corner and the week after we are at Silverstone…

“I think there is much more in the characteristics of the car fitting with the high-speed corners or with the components than on the pure potential when you have four teams within two tenths.”

Ferrari in title fight for the long haul, Vasseur says

Ferrari has been in the championship fight for some time but needs to only focus on each upcoming race rather than the bigger points picture, according to team principal Fred Vasseur. Charles Leclerc’s victory and Carlos Sainz’s third place in the …

Ferrari has been in the championship fight for some time but needs to only focus on each upcoming race rather than the bigger points picture, according to team principal Fred Vasseur.

Charles Leclerc’s victory and Carlos Sainz’s third place in the Monaco Grand Prix enabled Ferrari to close the gap to leader Red Bull to just 24 points, after Max Verstappen was limited to sixth and Sergio Perez retired. Although it was just Ferrari’s second win of the year, the Scuderia has scored a podium in every round except one — finishing fourth and fifth in China — and Vasseur says it has been in the mix for some time.

“Honestly we have 16 races to go, the most important is to think about the next one, not to think about the championships,” Vasseur told SpeedCity Broadcasting. “We have a long way to go and we have to stay calm.

“We were in the fight the last three or four races. We won in Melbourne; in Miami we had everybody within about six seconds, Imola also. The fight is there.”

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Sunday’s win was Leclerc’s first at home and came after twice failing to convert pole into victory in Monaco for Ferrari, with Vasseur acknowledging the significance of the result.

“It’s a huge release off the shoulders of everybody. Firstly I’m thinking about Charles because I think he had the question every single year, ‘This year what will happen? Blah blah blah’ and I think I will have a Charles pre-Monaco and post-Monaco now. But honestly I think it’s good for the team because they are pushing like hell at the factory — we have to not forget the guys back at the factory — and they did a mega good job.”

Vasseur also praised Sainz for his approach to the race, with the drivers responding to the way the team wanted them to handle the unusual approach to a race that didn’t require a pit stop after an early red flag.

“It’s a great feeling for sure, and it was under control from lap one. But the risk in this situation is to try to push too much or to lose control a little bit because you want to get more — and there’s nothing more to get than the win,” Vasseur said. “The drivers asked a couple of times to push a little bit more but we tried to slow them down a little bit.

“Carlos did a mega good job and we had a tricky position because we were asking him to push, to slow down, to push, to slow down, and he did fantastically.”

Title fight can change quickly with McLaren and Ferrari in mix – Vasseur

Ahead of the Monaco Grand Prix, Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur believes the Formula 1 championship fight is far from over this season because multiple teams are in the mix with Red Bull at many venues. Vasseur wants to Ferrari to bring …

Ahead of the Monaco Grand Prix, Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur believes the Formula 1 championship fight is far from over this season because multiple teams are in the mix with Red Bull at many venues.

Vasseur wants to Ferrari to bring developments more quickly to avoid slipping back on any given weekend, after estimating his team, McLaren and Red Bull were within 0.1s of each other in Imola. He believes that means the championship fight can be ignited quickly, as there is an increased chance of drivers being able to take big points off each other.

“Firstly, we did only seven races out of 24, that means we have 17 to go,” Vasseur said. “At this point of the season last year we were 100 points behind Aston Martin and we finished 100 points in front of them. It means the end of the championship is never after race seven, and it’s never more true this season.

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“I think that because the gap is very close, it’s not very often that you have six or potentially eight cars that could win a race. It means that when you’re not in good shape it can move you from P1 to P8, and in P8 you are scoring almost zero. That means the championship can change in one or two weekends.

“Imagine if you have a crash, a DNF and so on, it’s a game-changer in terms of the championship. Honestly, I didn’t have a look at the classification and I don’t know the delta in terms of points, but I think that if one team is doing a one-two and the other one has a DNF it means McLaren can come back, or we can come back at Red Bull.

“There’s still 17 weekends to go, let’s be focused on Monaco and don’t think about the championship. Let’s be focused on what we have to do race after race.”

After Charles Leclerc finished third in Imola — and within eight seconds of race winner Max Verstappen — Vasseur says recent upgrades from Ferrari have helped it join McLaren in putting pressure on Red Bull.

“It’s good news for me, it’s good news for F1, it’s good news for the championship,” he said. “If you have three teams within seven seconds in [nearly] 70 laps, it’s less than one tenth per lap. It was almost the same from the beginning of the weekend and we’ll start from scratch in Monaco with a different track layout, different corners and so on.

“Overall it’s a kind of mixed feelings for me, because we did a step forward, McLaren did probably the same as us; we compensated, I think, partly the delta with Red Bull and we are not far away now. I am a bit frustrated, because I think if we do a one-two in qualifying, we do a one-two in the race. If we missed something it was in qualifying and not in the race.”

Charles Leclerc has often been in the mix at the front for his home race, but the stars haven’t fully aligned for him there…yet. Mark Sutton/Motorsport Images

Vasseur says Ferrari wants to help bring an end to Leclerc’s bad luck at his home race with a first podium at the event. Leclerc has been on pole position twice at Monaco but on the first occasion a crash at the end of Q3 led to a mechanical issue going undetected and he failed to start the race. Then a year later he repeated the qualifying result but a strategic error saw him drop to fourth, a result that remains his best at home, something that Vasseur is keen to improve on.

“A few days ago, it was our home race in Imola and this weekend, Charles will be on home turf in Monaco, a race that is unfinished business for him and we’d like to help him put it to bed,” Vasseur said. “Carlos [Sainz] also loves racing in the principality, where he took his first podium at the wheel of a Ferrari, so they are both very motivated.

“It’s generally accepted that, with the current generation of cars, overtaking is harder here than at any other track on the calendar, which means qualifying takes on even greater importance than usual. We will therefore be looking to make a step forward in this discipline, as so far this season we have lacked what it takes to be quickest of all.

“With this in mind, we have been working hard in the simulator and during engineering meetings, preparing everything down to the smallest detail and we fully intend to be front-runners.”