Ferrari Boss Hits Back: Why Vasseur Believes Ferrari is Still F1's Titan in 2024

After a rocky Spanish Grand Prix, Ferrari's boss Frederic Vasseur is pushing back against claims that the renowned Italian team has been outclassed in the relentless arena of Formula 1 development. The talk began buzzing when Ferrari, who kicked off the season as Red Bull’s closest contender with their revolutionary SF-24, appeared to lose their spark. Despite two early-season victories and a slew of podium finishes, their performance fizzled out in Canada and faltered again in Spain.

It's hard to overlook that despite a major upgrade brought to Barcelona, Ferrari saw Charles Leclerc secure only a fifth-place finish, while Carlos Sainz trailed behind in sixth. But Vasseur is unflinching. To him, the new parts performed exactly as forecasted, and he stresses that the race for technological supremacy is always a relative battle.

Vasseur was clear when asked if he was satisfied with the new upgrades’ performance: “Yes, we are satisfied with the numbers that we get,” he told media outlets including Motorsport Week. “First, everybody is improving. That means that it is not that because you bring something that you will do a jump in front. It is that if you don’t bring, you will do a jump backwards. And everybody is bringing parts now, each two or three events.”

In an era where micro-improvements can turn the tide, Vasseur sheds light on the process: “Sometimes you have the list of what we are publishing, but it is just aero. Don’t forget that we are not developing just the aero. And then sometimes we need also one or two events before to get the best from the package that we have.”

The seasoned boss underscores that finding the ultimate performance can sometimes take several rounds of fine-tuning. He remains steadfast in his assertion that Ferrari is targeting steady, incremental steps in enhancing their car's capabilities. Asked if the lackluster speed was due to setup issues, he replied, “No, but perhaps we do a better usage of the car next week after one event.”

He further dismantled the idea of a sudden performance leap, stating, “It was quite often the case for everybody last year that if you have a look on the performance, when every single team was bringing something, it was sometimes the race after that the performance was there. And it will be like this until the end also because we have a kind of asymptote of performance.”

Despite the tough showing, this isn't a story of Ferrari playing catch-up but rather holding their own in a field where the margins are paper-thin. “And now all the packages are much smaller than it was 24 months ago. It means that we are into the delta,” Vasseur points out.

The skepticism doesn’t end there. Both Leclerc and Sainz suggested after the Spanish GP that McLaren had gained ground. Yet, Vasseur is unyielding: no team, according to him, has made strides more significant than Ferrari since the last season. “McLaren, one year ago, they finished UK 25 seconds ahead of us,” Vasseur remarked. “I’m not sure that the rate of development is much bigger than what we are doing.”

With each passing event, the narrative unfolds: Vasseur’s Ferrari is anything but complacent. Rather, it's a team deeply immersed in the grind, meticulously carving out every ounce of performance. With a few more races to fully integrate their upgrades, don’t count Ferrari out just yet.