MPH: Vasseur gets Ferrari head-start in F1 boss shake-up

F1

Frédéric Vasseur inherits a Ferrari team with a strong car but huge expectations, whilst other team bosses have different kinds of challenges in their new roles

Ferrari F1 team boss Frederic Vasseur

The grid being closer than ever could encourage a 'fire-and-hire' culture in F1

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Now that the game of team principal musical chairs has played out – four of the 10 Formula 1 teams now have different bosses than at the end of the season – we can look at what it is each of them has inherited and what their prospects are in the short term and long.

Ferrari’s recruitment of Frédéric Vasseur to replace Mattia Binotto is interesting in that they have gone outside of the team for the first time since the 1993 signing of Jean Todt and the ’97 addition of Ross Brawn. Vasseur has been appointed as team principal and general manager, which is subtly different to Binotto’s title of team principal and managing director. These titles have meaning, within Ferrari especially. So despite the outside recruitment, it suggests there will be more oversight from above, not less – probably from CEO of the Ferrari company, Benedetto Vigna and/or chairman John Elkann. These are not, however, racing people, steeped in the very specialised demands of the sport. So longer term, there is no reason to believe the premiership soccer mentality will not still prevail if Ferrari under Vasseur does not deliver world titles.

But shorter term, the chances of a Vasseur honeymoon period are pretty good. He arrives as the technical team are on a very productive path. The innovative 066/7 power unit – with its small turbo, long inlet tracts and super-fast ignition making the maximum permitted fuel pressure of 500 bar accessible for the first time – was for much of last year running in detuned form. Even then, it was competitive, albeit without quite the startling low-speed superiority of the early-season races. Running the MGU-H slower to protect it from the sort of failures seen at Barcelona and Baku was losing it almost 0.3sec of lap time potential in the latter part of the season (this unconnected to the further detuning deployed in the altitude of Mexico). Ferrari seems confident that the MGU-H reliability issue has been fixed. If so, there is some low-hanging lap time fruit there. Aerodynamically the team was already on a good path, so there’s no reason to assume the ’23 Ferrari will be anything other than super-competitive.

Ferrari F1 driver Charles Leclerc driving at the 2022 Abu Dhabi GP

F1-75 and power unit provides strong base for next year’s car

Ferrari

Given that the power unit specs are essentially frozen now until 2026, can Mercedes, Honda or Renault expect comparable gains between ’22 and ’23? Probably not. The prioritising of performance over reliability in the short time Ferrari had available post-2019 to create an all-new PU was a clear-eyed choice. If performance development was to be banned beyond ’22 but reliability modifications permitted, then it was the obvious way to go. That choice is what prevented the team from seriously taking the ’22 title fight to Red Bull – way more than any operational errors. The PU failures in Barcelona and Baku and the post-Baku surrendering of more than quarter-of-a-second of lap time took the team out of contention more surely than strategy calls at Monaco and Silverstone or tyre choice in Hungary. If Ferrari really has cured the MGU-H problem, Vasseur could be off to a flying start. But attending to the operations side of the team could be more difficult. That’s a task he would have faced anyway had he remained at Alfa Romeo-Sauber, a team with at least as many operational problems as Ferrari last year, but without the attendant spotlight.

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Ferrari reportedly tried twice to recruit Andreas Seidl from McLaren and twice he’s said to have turned them down. Instead, he heads to Sauber to replace Vasseur, but in the role of CEO. He will be appointing his own team principal in time. This is very much an Audi appointment even though it has not yet completed its buy-in to the team. Seidl is there to preside over the build-up of the team’s resources, to transform it from a group of 400 people to one maybe twice that size. He’s there very much to oversee the investment strategy within the cost cap regulations, but at the same time he must be attending to the operational problems he has inherited from Vasseur’s time there and before. He is under less immediate pressure than Vasseur at Ferrari, but faces a highly complex and multi-faceted challenge, one which he is surely up to.

McLaren’s promotion of Andrea Stella as Seidl’s replacement has been received very favourably at the team’s base. His rise from Fernando Alonso’s race engineer at Ferrari to senior engineer at McLaren and then executive director of racing has been seamless. Not a self-promoter, but diligent, intelligent and a good communicator, he’s been there long enough to have a very thorough understanding of the team and what it needs. He worked well alongside Seidl and now takes on the task of continuing its attempts at transcending its customer team status, something which should be possible longer term, but which is a difficult task at the moment, given that its new wind tunnel won’t be operational until 2024. Operationally, it’s a slicker team than a few years ago but essentially it’s in a holding pattern until its new facilities come on line. It’s probably a good time for Stella to ease himself into the role.

Williams has parted company with Jost Capito (and technical director Francois Xavier Demaison) but not yet appointed a replacement. That is a crisis management job at the moment, with the team’s future direction far from certain.

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