Ferrari F1 team principal Fred Vasseur says he doesn’t want to hear about the Scuderia’s championship chances yet given the team’s fluctuating performances.
A large upgrade package in Spain yielded the team a surprise Barcelona GP win, and a first for Lewis Hamilton in red. And at last weekend’s British Grand Prix, his team-mate Charles Leclerc also got off the mark, bouncing back from a tough spell of disappointing form and bad luck.
With Ferrari winning two out of the last three races on merit, the squad’s resurgence has inevitably reignited talk of the team challenging for the world championship as both drivers are chasing down the leading Mercedes pair of Kimi Antonelli and George Russell.
Hamilton came away from his home race just 32 points behind scoreless Antonelli. In the constructors’ championship Ferrari has a bigger 78-point deficit to overcome, but still has over half the season to do so.
Photo by: Andy Hone/ LAT Images via Getty Images
But team boss Vasseur has played down talk of Maranello challenging for both world titles, given the squad was nowhere over a difficult Austrian Grand Prix weekend which split its two winning weekends.
Vasseur didn’t want to be too negative after Spielberg’s off-weekend, and equally he now doesn’t want to get carried away after Leclerc’s morale boosting Silverstone success.
“After Barcelona, I had the comment ‘Ah, Ferrari is back in the championship’. I said no.,” he said. “The week after you told me Ferrari is nowhere. I said no.
“I will have exactly the same approach with everybody at home. To say: ‘Guys, we had a good weekend. Now let’s be focused on Spa. It’s not that we are champions. We are [also] not nowhere. We are improving step by step. It is like it is.
He added: “I never try to draw a conclusion after one race, two races, a good result, a bad result. I’m just focused on doing more and to do better. It’s true for me, it’s true for everybody at the factory. Then it’s your job to speak about the championship, but I never did it.”
“I will have exactly the same approach with everybody at home. To say: ‘Guys, we had a good weekend. Now let’s be focused on Spa. It’s not that we are champions. We are [also] not nowhere,” Fred Vasseur
Photo by: James Sutton / LAT Images via Getty Images
Vasseur is well aware that the Belgian Grand Prix at high-speed Spa-Francorchamps, while on paper relatively similar in profile to Silverstone, will throw up different challenges for the 2026 power units with its long straights and dramatic energy harvesting requirements. And he still sees the Mercedes W17 as the grid’s best car and power unit package in most circumstances.
“I think Mercedes, honestly, they still have a small advantage on pure performance,” Vasseur explained. “If you have a look at the six, seven sessions that we did this weekend, they are probably five times ahead.
“Next week will be another challenge in Spa. Firstly, the weather will be quite a bit different. But we have to start from scratch every single weekend. There is nothing magic. We can’t imagine making a step of five, six tenths in one weekend. It’s just the addition of small gains everywhere that will make the difference.”
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– The Autosport.com Team
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