The Italian Grand Prix is held in Monza, Italy, in September 2023. It was then that Fred Vasseur, the recently appointed team principal of the scuderia, realized the true significance of Ferrari.
All weekend long he’d been stopped for photos and autographs, far more than normal. From his perch on the Ferrari pit wall, he’d seen the fan clubs in the grandstands keeping close watch of the red cars. Post-race, he saw thousands of fans flooding the main straight to congregate under the podium. They unfurled their prancing horse emblazoned flags, cheering and chanting in an explosion of noise and color, all in honor of Carlos Sainz’s third-place finish.
Ferrari is more than just a Formula One team in Italy. It is a cause for pride in the country. Monza serves as a place of pilgrimage for the devoted tifosi fan base.
“You realize in Monza the expectation, the atmosphere,” Vasseur said. “You say, ‘OK guys, now we need to give back something.’”
Since January 2023, Vasseur has led Ferrari, the most renowned and successful team in Formula One. When he accepted the job, he was aware of what he was getting into. He has to put an end to Ferrari’s 15-year title drought and bring the team back to its former dominance in Formula One.
Lewis Hamilton, the seven-time world champion, is a blockbuster addition to the squad for 2025, but his project is much more than just a name on the banner.
“You need to keep the mindset everywhere, in every single employee, that we have to do a better job tomorrow,” Vasseur said, sitting in his office within Ferrari’s motorhome during the Canadian Grand Prix weekend in June. “It’s the only way to improve. It will be a continuous improvement. We have to continue to change things everywhere.”
Vasseur can not recall any specific details from his first visit as team principal to the Maranello factory, which has been home to Ferrari for more than 80 years.
Numerous times, he had been there as the team manager of Alfa Romeo, which ran Ferrari engines. The fact that he was now the guy in control did not lead his feelings to change. He was overburdened with work.
“It was something like three weeks before the launch, and four weeks before the first test day,” Vasseur recalled. “It was a rush from day one. Honestly, I was not too emotional.”
After a mixed 2022, Vasseur became control of the Ferrari team. The team had a great start, winning four races, and Charles Leclerc completed the drivers’ title in second place behind Max Verstappen. However, a season of discontent resulted from its inability to maintain its early-year challenge against Red Bull as well as a few notable strategy errors and pit stop blunders. Senior management at Ferrari turned to Vasseur after finishing second was insufficient to keep leader Mattia Binotto in his position.
Vasseur never wanted to join Ferrari and instantly implement radical changes; he had spent the previous five years heading Alfa Romeo, now renamed Sauber. “You have to join with humility,” he said. “You can’t arrive somewhere and say, ‘OK I will change this, this, this, this.’ It took time for me to understand the process.” He leaned on Ferrari’s then-sporting director and his friend of 30 years, Laurent Mekies (now team principal at RB), for advice as he evaluated potential changes.
The team’s mindset and culture were given a lot of attention. Vasseur and other Ferrari employees refused to make any parallels between the current situation and Binotto’s management style. But Vasseur made it plain that he would accept the fallout and felt that Red Bull had set an example for others by encouraging them to take chances.
“I felt the team somehow (was) a bit conservative,” Vasseur said. “When you are four-tenths or five-tenths (of a second per lap) behind Red Bull, it’s not that Red Bull have the magic bullet of five-tenths and it’s there. It’s that on 10 topics, perhaps they are half a tenth faster than you.
“If you push a little bit the boundaries and say ‘Let’s take a bit more risk,’ or be a bit more aggressive, you put the team in the mentality to do it.” The culture of risk assessment changes. “It means that you need to be used to being at the limit.”
A home Grand Prix needs a home movie 📹
Memories from our Monza weekend 🥹#ItalianGP 🇮🇹 pic.twitter.com/NaOAeNJRdJ
— Scuderia Ferrari HP (@ScuderiaFerrari) September 7, 2023
All departments have benefited from this empowerment, which has made it possible for upgrade packages to get to a track several races early. Leclerc expressed his admiration for the change in events, stating that the team was “not losing time in taking decisions” in an effort to make the car better.
“Sometimes you’ve got to be brave and go in a direction, and we are all convinced it might be the right one, but it might be a risky one,” Leclerc said. “In the past, we were a bit safer on those things.” A more proactive Ferrari is indicated by working on development routes with confidence that the planned changes will be successful and using them as a basis, as opposed to taking a “wait-and-see” approach.
Vasseur is happy with the shift in culture, particularly with the support of the more than a thousand workers at Ferrari’s Formula One team. “Each time that we are focused on something, we are able to improve,” he said. “The pit stops were a drama two years ago. They did 2,000 pit stops during the winter. We went back, and we’re in good shape.” Ferrari went from being the fourth-fastest team in the pits to the second-fastest within a year, now trailing only Red Bull. Vasseur said 2023 Ferrari “lost too many points for lack of opportunism” but had now “made a huge step forward on this.”
Meanwhile, Vasseur has stepped up Ferrari’s efforts to bring more talent into the changed culture. He wouldn’t put a number on the scale of the growth, but said the team has “recruited a lot,” believing the headcount in some departments was “weak” compared to other teams.
“We have a lot of people who are joining or have joined the team in the last couple of weeks or months,” he said. “It’s a good feeling.”
This includes two significant additions from Mercedes: Loic Serra as head of chassis performance engineering and Jerome d’Ambrosio as deputy team principal, both of whom will begin in October. Vasseur thinks Ferrari’s guidance “convinced” the newcomers.
But out of all the signings, none are as significant as Hamilton.
His signing was a seismic event for Formula One (F1) as well as Ferrari. Never before has there been such an unanticipated or well-known driver transfer in the sport’s history.
Ferrari made a declaration of purpose to entice Hamilton to leave Mercedes, the team he had established his reputation with and where he planned to finish his career. Hamilton received security from Mercedes that would not come with a multi-year contract that would extend until his 40th birthday, and it is also understood that his Ferrari contract is more lucrative than his previous terms.
In the weeks following the announcement on February 1, Hamilton talked about his early love and fascination with Ferrari. He recalled how he would always play as the red vehicle in F1 video games and wondered what it would be like to don that recognizable race suit. There is nothing like the magnetism of Ferrari. Hamilton, though, is not just joining for the experience. He still has a burning desire to win an unprecedented eighth world championship and is confident that he can do so with Ferrari.
Vasseur was instrumental in Hamilton’s signing. The two had been friends for over 20 years. While Hamilton was in GP2 (now known as Formula Two) on his way to F1, he competed for Vasseur’s ART Grand Prix team. Even after they parted ways, they continued to be cordial.
Vasseur said Hamilton’s arrival would be part of the growing momentum at Maranello, not only because of his on-track capabilities. “It’s not just about the speed into the car or whatever,” Vasseur said. “It’s a mindset, a commitment. It’s a huge push for the team.” He thought it sent “a huge message also for the recruitment, for the sponsors” of Ferrari. In May, the team signed a title sponsorship deal with computing giant HP that is thought to be one of the biggest financial agreements on the grid.
Is that part of the Lewis Hamilton effect? Vasseur said it is difficult to tell. “But the positive dynamic is there,” he said. “It’s like a snowball.”
Hamilton is anticipating his next chapter with Ferrari even as his final season with Mercedes picks up owing to its on-track improvements, allowing him to win at Silverstone for the first time in more than two years. Every week, he has a conversation regarding their off-track plans with Ferrari president John Elkann. After all, Ferrari is getting much more than just a world-class racer in Hamilton.
“(We’re) just talking about fashion, and things that we want to do,” stated Hamilton. He also has regular conversations with Leclerc, but all discussions pertaining to racing will have to wait until Hamilton formally joins. Hamilton and Ferrari are aware of their rivalry up until the season finale in Abu Dhabi in November, when the checkered flag is displayed.
Vasseur is in contention for the strongest driver lineup on the grid, especially since Leclerc signed a new deal in January, securing his spot for the long haul. However, he is keen to emphasize the departing Sainz’s function as“part of the recovery of the team last year.” Sainz was the only non-Red Bull driver to win a race last year, and scored Ferrari’s first victory of 2024 in Australia after capitalizing on Verstappen’s retirement. “He always had a positive input into the team, and this helped us a lot,” said Vasseur
Similar to Hamilton, Vasseur’s relationship with Leclerc dates back more than ten years to his go-karting days. Leclerc made his F1 debut with Sauber under Vasseur’s tenure, after racing for ART in F2. In F1, it has made possible an uncommon human connection.. “If we just look at each other, we know (what is) the feeling,” Vasseur said.
“He still has the same characteristic, to blame himself first. For this, he didn’t change. But overall, I think he is on the trajectory I saw in the past. He’s doing a mega good job in the car, and in terms of motivation and the collaboration with everybody. We can’t complain.”
But Ferrari’s momentum has not always been in a forward direction. Following Leclerc’s dominant performance at the end of May in the Monaco Grand Prix, when he started from pole position and led every lap, Ferrari appeared to be gaining ground on Red Bull. Ever since, it has regressed.
Recent attempts to make improvements to the car have brought back the bouncing issue that all teams experienced in 2022, which at times has left Leclerc and Sainz wanting in confidence. Together, they have only finished on the podium once in the five races since Monaco, and that was Sainz’s third place finish in Austria, which came about as a result of Verstappen and Lando Norris’s collision. Mercedes and McLaren, meanwhile, have won after overtaking their rivals in the standings.
Following the British Grand Prix this month, Leclerc called the current run of events “worse than a nightmare.” Unless something is done quickly, the outcome in Monaco appears to be an anomaly rather than a reflection of what is to come for the remainder of the year.
Vasseur ignores the sounds coming from outside. He added a “sorry!” and smiled after realizing that he does not use social media, read the news, or watch TV news. “I am pretty alone,” he said. “By myself, I always put a lot of strain on my shoulders. Running a business may often be a life or death situation where you must produce outcomes in order to survive. I was in this condition for the last thirty years of my life, and it was probably even worse at first.
“I don’t need someone to put the pressure on myself and say you need to win.” The desire to win is clearly acknowledged, especially at Ferrari. Vasseur was even closer to that when he saw the Monza crowd.
Ferrari’s organizational structure gives Vasseur a great deal of freedom to assemble the team however he sees suitable. Benedetto Vigna, the CEO of the brand, and Elkann are his primary clients. In Vasseur’s words, they do not have to “do a board meeting to decide a pit stop.”
Part of it involves signing Hamilton, but he also intends to create a new technical structure at the team following the departure of Enrico Cardile, the chassis technical chief, to Aston Martin, following the summer break.
Vasseur said in Hungary that it was “not a drama” to lose one person out of a 300-strong team. “I always push to explain that individuals are less important than the group,” he said.
Perhaps for a similar reason, Aston Martin has emerged as the front-runner to sign F1’s most successful designer, Adrian Newey, following his departure from Red Bull early in the upcoming season, while Ferrari is reportedly losing interest in him.
The Ferrari of the future will not be dependent on a single driver or person. It will depend on everyone if it is to relive the glory days of its F1 heyday in the early 2000s, when Michael Schumacher led a serial winning machine full of elite talent. “I’m really convinced the performance is coming from all the employees,” Vasseur said.
Over the last 18 months, Ferrari’s competitors have observed a change.. “The team seems to be much more structured, a no bulls— approach,” said Toto Wolff, Mercedes team principal and Vasseur’s good friend. “Fred has always been that. You can’t tell him a story because he’s going to see through it. There is a reason why the team has started winning races and competing for a constructors’ and drivers’ world championship.”
Red Bull F1 chief Christian Horner said Vasseur has “galvanized the team together pretty well” and that he was “a racer.” But he also noted how different Vasseur’s job is to any other in F1. “Every team has different pressures,” Horner said. “But with Ferrari, you have essentially a national team, and the pressure that goes with that and the expectation that goes with that.”
That word again: pressure. Vasseur is the fifth team principal to supervise the attempt to break the drought for Ferrari since the company’s last constructors’ championship victory in 2008. He has stood for a departure from the past in a lot of ways. But it is impossible to ignore Ferrari’s past. Within the team’s campervan are pictures from its best moments in Formula One. Vasseur’s office walls are covered in them.
“You can’t ignore the past, or the history,” Vasseur said. “(But) when we are doing the job, I think we have to be focused on today, not to think too much about the past, not to think too much about the future.”
It might be difficult to ignore the time in the future when a driver of Hamilton’s caliber is expected to arrive. However, Vasseur’s current priorities include building the groundwork for his Ferrari team, giving everyone a sense of empowerment and emphasizing how much of their success is shared.
“If we can keep the same dynamic,” he said, “and have everybody at the factory convinced that the results of the team are their results, I would be more than happy.”
