Ferrari F1 boss Vasseur says 'time on pitwall' gives him edge over rivals

F1

Second place wasn't good enough for Ferrari in last year's #F1 title race and Mattia Binotto has given way to Fred Vasseur. The new boss says that decades of running teams puts him at an advantage, even though he has plenty to learn about the Scuderia

2 Ferrari F1 team boss Fred Vasseur

Vasseur believes racing greater experience gives him strength in depth

Ferrari

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Fred Vasseur may be less than two months into his new job, but the Ferrari team principal believes that he already has an advantage over rival bosses, saying his 32 years of racing experience, including time on the pitwall in GP2 and F1, gives him an edge.

Speaking in this month’s magazine, the Frenchman highlights both what he brings to the Scuderia’s table in helping a team with the weight of a nation on its shoulders.

From the archive

2022 was a breakthrough year for Ferrari, taking four wins and coming second in the constructors’ championship – but the season was ultimately viewed as a disappointment, as reliability issues, strategic blunders and driver error eventually left it well adrift of Red Bull. Former team principal Mattia Binotto was the one to take the fall, leaving Ferrari after the season-closer at Abu Dhabi.

The Scuderia then turned to Vasseur as a replacement, who had been immensely successful with his own ART junior team, before then being brought into to steady the Sauber ship as it became Alfa Romeo.

Though the Frenchman said he weighed up the positives and negatives of taking on arguably the biggest role in motor sport, in the end the former Alfa boss couldn’t turn it down.

“You can’t say no to this kind of offer,” he says. “It’s the biggest challenge available around the table of F1, but also a fantastic one. And very, very quickly, we agreed. It was difficult to leave Sauber. But this is life, and I will see them in Bahrain. I have a new challenge now.”

Though stressing that all current F1 bosses bring something different to the table, he articulates where he feels his strengths lie.

“I spent the last 32 years of my life in racing activities, and I will bring perhaps a bit more of the racing aspect than some other team principals,” he says.

Alfa Romeo F1 team boss Frederic Vasseur at the 2022 French GP in Paul Ricard

Vasseur helped move Sauber/Alfa Romeo in right direction

Alfa Romeo / Sauber

“The characteristic is perhaps that I spent more time than the others on the pitwall.”

Vasseur also appreciates that even though a new face is brought in to help push the team forward, there can be obvious drawbacks too.

“You are joining the position with completely fresh eyes and fresh vision on the system and so on,” he emphasises.

“On the other hand I have to discover and to know a bit more than a thousand people, which is not an easy challenge. Again, we all are different with the pros and the cons. But I think it’s probably more of an advantage.”

Vasseur is now tasked with emulating the success of Jean Todt and co from the late ’90s and through the mid-2000s. Though he welcomes the responsibility, Vasseur says the task is alien to that which his countryman faced in the ’90s.

“For sure we have the pressure that everybody wants to see the team winning again but this is a positive pressure for me,” he argues.

“Perhaps I will say differently in a couple of months, but this pressure for me is one of the pillars of performance.

“I don’t think that you can compare F1 of today and the F1 of the mid-1990s. It’s a completely different world.

“I don’t want to be focused on what’s happened in the past. I have to be focused on what will happen in the next two or three years.”