The Ferrari F1 camp has undergone some dramatic changes over the years. The most recent developments have seen their cars suffer from multiple reliability issues as well as poor strategy calls. Ferrari sacked former team principal Mattia Binotto after multiple questionable decisions in 2021 and 2022. Ferrari replaced him with Frédéric Vasseur. Vasseur left his role as Alfa Romeo Team Principal to take over at Ferrari.
Ferrari currently sits 4th in the constructors championship; a position they are not familiar with. When interviewed by F1.com Leclerc stated that he is 100% behind Vasseur and the direction he’s setting for the team. “Well, I think he’s just starting this process now. Until now he was basically trying to analyze the situation as quickly as possible in order to do the best changes possible for the future.”
He continued, “So yeah, I think the big part of the job will be done from now on – so we will see. Obviously, I speak a lot with Fréd and I know what are his middle and long term plans for the team, and I’m completely behind him and I trust him fully…So I’m sure these are the right choices, and it goes in the right direction for the team. So, for that, I’m looking forward to it. But yeah, let’s wait and see.”
Leclerc Speaks on Reliability Issues
Leclerc has had a disappointing season in 2023 with multiple retirements and reliability concerns with the car. In an interview with Autosport.com Leclerc stated, “I was speaking just now with Carlos [Ferrari Teammate] and what we are lacking is consistency from the car. Not even from corner to corner, just in the same corner I can have a huge oversteery balance and then a huge understeery balance, and our car is so wind-effected. This year we have a car that is much more wind sensitive, and we are struggling much more with that. So there is a lot of work going on that. Other than that, for some reason this is off because it is not something I have had for the rest of the weekend so we’ll have to check the car, but I had a lot of bottoming especially in high speeds which is something I can’t quite explain, because I didn’t have that yesterday. So this we’ll have a look at in the data. ”Teammate Carlos Sainz told F1 Sky Sports, “I think we are in the middle of a learning process.”
Where to from here?
Regardless of the source the Ferraris are approaching the half way point of the season and need to find answers if they are to mount any offensives towards getting back into constructors and drivers championship contention. After a P7 and P5 finish for Leclerc and Sainz respectively they are looking to improve for the next race at Imola. Team principal Vasseur told F1.com, “We will have updates, but honestly [in Miami] the issue is not the potential of the car, I think that when we are putting together everything we are there. It is more on the exploitation on the tools that we have rather than the updates. For sure we will bring updates but it’s not the issue.” We will report more as this story continues to develop.
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