Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur combative: 'I will never accept that'

In Formula 1, you are only as good as the amount of money you have at your disposal, along with the quality of staff. There is no shortage of the former at Ferrari, but in terms of personnel, the team is making some strides. The Italians are in the middle of a transformation with staff changes, especially in key positions within the organisation. Before all the spots are filled in the desired way, quite some time will have passed. Indeed, in Formula 1, it is customary for personnel coming over from other teams to spend some time at home first to avoid (as much as possible) taking secrets with them to the new employer.

Vasseur speaks of long process

"Recruitment is a very long process," says Vasseur, speaking to, among others, GPblog. "And the consequence of this is that also the people will join sometime in a couple of months. We have people starting in the company on the 1st of January, 2024, some start on July 24th, and some will start at the beginning of 2025. It's a very long process, and somehow it's a bit frustrating, also because you have the feeling that you are working for 2 or 3 years from today. But on the other hand, if you don't start to do it, you will never get it."

It could be read between the lines that Vasseur is not counting on success for now because not the right people are on board. The Frenchman immediately countered: "No, it's not what I said. I said that all the processes in F1 are quite long, with a lot of inertia, and when you want to work with people, you have to wait two or three years before to get the result because they will join the company in 18 months or two years, they will work on the car of the year three. But I never said, and I will never accept that to say that we have to wait for these guys to get an improvement, because, also, I trust the people we have in the team [to be successful]."

Vasseur has confidence in his team members

The team boss continued: "We need to improve, but we can do a better job with what we have today, and we have to be focused on trying to get the best from what we have. And it's the next challenge. I'm sure that we have a lot of room for improvement with the current situation. I don't want to postpone any target or something like this because this would be the wrong message and the wrong motivation. And at the end, it's a non-end process. It's not because we will have three, five, or even ten people who will join the team in the next 18 months that it will change completely the philosophy and the potential of the team. There is not a before and after," Vasseur said.