Ferrari Team Principle Is Trying To Understand What Went Wrong

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While Red Bull Racing developed the RB18 into one of its most dominant Formula 1 cars of all time, Ferrari took itself out of the title fight. The legendary Italian racing team had a competitive car early in the 2022 season but failed to capitalize on it fully. Ferrari made numerous strategic error that hindered its on-track performance. Now, the team’s new principal is looking to make systemic changes within Ferrari’s strategy department.

Frederic Vasseur has high expectations for his first season in Maranello. 

The new Ferrari team principal is targeting a championship victory in his first year in charge of the team, but has ruled out a reshuffle of staff before the new season gets underway in March.

Ferrari has not won a Formula One title since its constructors' victory in 2008 and last year finished a distant second to champions Red Bull, leading to the resignation of former team principal Mattia Binotto.

Speaking to reporters for the first time in his new role on Thursday, Vasseur made clear that his ambition is to end Ferrari's title drought this year.

Mattia Binotto left the team despite finishing second in the championship. Ferrari’s leadership expects nothing less than a championship. However, Vasseur isn’t planning simply firing the entire strategy department and hiring new people. According to Racer, the former Alfa Romeo wants to review what when wrong and change how Ferrari operates on race weekends.

Vasseur told Racer, “I’m trying to understand exactly what has happened on every single mistake, what happened last year and to try to know if it’s a matter of a decision, a matter of organization, of communication.” Vasseur won’t have a shortage of incidents to review.

"It's an obvious target," he said. "I think when you are in a top team you can't have another target than the win at the end of the day.

"You can't start the season saying, 'OK, I would be happy with P2'. That would really be a lack of ambition. I think we have everything we need to do a good job and the target has to be to win, for sure."

Ferrari started the 2022 season with a race-winning car but dropped points to its rivals due to engine reliability issues, strategy errors and an inability to keep pace with the in-season development of Red Bull.

Vasseur, who started at Ferrari on Jan. 9 after leaving Alfa Romeo last year, recognised the need to improve in a number of areas but said he was unwilling to make major personnel changes before the season gets underway in Bahrain on March 5.

"That would be arrogant from my side to take action on the technical organisation after two weeks," he said. "We have had discussions on how we can improve the system, what would be the weakness of the system and to try to do a better job.

"But it is more continuous improvement rather than a big step or big changes, which, from my point of view, wouldn't make sense.

"I trust the guys in place and will try to do the best for them also to do the job. It will be time after a couple of weeks or months to take action if it is not working, but I trust them."

Despite having no plans to make major changes before the season, Vasseur said he has conducted in-depth reviews into the team's mistakes last year. He suggested that the process for making in-race strategy calls was too complex at Ferrari and that the pit wall was unable to react to developing situations as quickly as it needed to.

"We are currently discussing about this, about the organisation," Vasseur said. "When you're speaking about strategy or aerodynamics or another topic, you have to avoid to be just focused on the top of the pyramid.

"Very often when you're speaking about strategy, it's much more a matter of organisation than the guy on the pit wall. I'm trying to understand exactly what has happened on every single mistake, what happened last year and to try to know if it's a matter of a decision, a matter of organisation or of communication.

"Very often on the pit wall, the biggest issue is communication and the number of people involved rather than the individual. If you put too many people discussing about the same thing, when you have the outcome of the decision, the car will be on the next lap!

"You need a clear flow of discussion, and clear flow of communication between good people in the right position. It's work in progress."

Vasseur is confident that Ferrari, which has finished second in the constructors' championship six times since its last title victory in 2008, is not lacking anything compared to its main rivals Red Bull and Mercedes. He believes that with the right organisation there is no reason why it can't win a title again.

"I'm really convinced that Ferrari today -- and for sure my experience is limited to the last two weeks -- has everything we need to win. We have to put everything together to do a good job, but we have everything to win.

"Then I think you can have a look at the reasons of the last decades [why Ferrari hasn't won more], but the wheel is always rolling and it's just a matter of continuous improvement. For me, if we are doing a better job than the others in a couple of months or years then we will be able to win.

"It's not that anything is set in stone and if you look have a look at some teams they were in a very dominant situation a couple of years ago and they are nowhere today.

"You don't have to take these directions that, OK it was like this the last decade or last 20 years and it will stay like this in the future. F1 is a changing world and we just have to be focused on the job, on the performance and everything is possible."

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