Frederic Vasseur has explained the strategy team changes at Ferrari as he adds on the testing and also Red Bull’s performance.
For Vasseur, he is now six weeks into his tenure at Maranello and Ferrari. The former Alfa man has been placed in charge of bringing the glory days back to the prancing horse regime which looked threatening in 2022, but it all went for a toss as the season progressed with Red Bull taking the glory away.
It hasn’t been long for him at the helm but he has made some changes with the big one of placing Ravin Jain as the head of strategy as the Indian origin personnel gets a big promotion after spending few years in F1. He replaces Inaki Rueda, who has been given a factory role as a sporting director.
The pitwall team has been trimmed to six people with Rueda and Claudio Albertini gone, where the latter is now with the Ferrari Driver Academy. Vasseur insists the changes is not aimed at individuals but it is part of an organisation and process where the stress in group work than focus on one person or an individual.
“We don’t have to pay attention to the name and roles, I think the most important is the group and the organisation, if we want to speak about strategy then it is one group with process, with software, with communication, we have to analyse and digest racing and try to do a better job,” said Vasseur to TV media.
“It is true with every single department of the company, we are where we are. It is a decision we took collectively, it is important to have all the organisation together and Inaki is focused on the sporting side for 10-12 days now, we have a team for the strategy, it is never a single person and we have to improve.
“At the end of the day, it is opportunity to look at the communication and software. It is not secret that the team struggle in some occasion and they started to take action in the last part of the season last year, and I think they did a good improvement. It was a decision to re-structure little bit the pitwall.
“It was not just the matter of individual but a matter of number of persons on the pitwall and so it is not just about one person in strategy. I think it is a lot of things, as I said, like software, its communication, it’s a team that are factory based and I made changes and I hope it will help,’ summed up Vasseur.
Despite these changes, Vasseur notes he is still understanding the team and its process. He joined with humility and wants to keep it that way. “We have to be realistic, you can’t change much in four weeks but we take time for sure, it is a long process,” he said. “The team is a good one, they had good results last year.
“I need to know everybody, I need to know the process, I need to know the pitwall, lot of things to digest and it was quite a short notice. I have full respect and I’ll do it with full humility, because I have full respect to the people of the team, you have to keep in mind that last year they fought for the championship and I joined the team with full humility and the fact is that I don’t have to do the revolution,” summed up Vasseur.
While Ferrari can make the changes, they still have to fend off the charge of Red Bull who looked pretty solid in the three days in Bahrain. At the moment, there is no denying that they are the team to beat in Bahrain and beyond. Vasseur knows it too and he is not taking anything lightly.
“They look to be performing for sure on the long stint and on one lap performance but in the end we need to be focused on ourselves,” said Vasseur. We know there is tons of things to get. The car is brand new, the performance will be there when we put the process together which will be the challenge to get next week.
“We did different attempt, some very good, some not good ones, we are still in the process to get all the options and we have to put everything together next week. At the end of the day, Red Bull are the benchmark, they are world champions, regarding their performance they look strong, but it isn’t surprising,” summed up Vasseur.
Here’s what drivers said after Day 1
Here’s what drivers said after Day 2
Here’s what drivers said after Day 3
Here’s Ferrari on car changes for 2023
Here’s Charles Leclerc driving old Ferrari car
Here’s Frederic Vasseur on Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz
Here’s Frederic Vasseur on Ferrari’s win target and PU
