F1 News
Team principal Vasseur praises: 'That helps Ferrari get better'
Only Ferrari managed to break Red Bull Racing's hegemony this season, but there is no question of a successful season. For almost a season and a half, Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc have lost touch with Max Verstappen's team, but Ferrari is on the rise, says Fred Vasseur, Ferrari's team principal. That is partly thanks to both his drivers.
The fact that Leclerc and Sainz are fighting each other in a positive way means that Ferrari is getting stronger as a team, according to Vasseur. The French team boss tells Racer.com: "We have to avoid coming to conclusions too quickly. Before the break in Spa we were also in good shape, Charles started from pole position – qualified on the first row – and did a good race. As it’s a matter of hundreds of seconds, sometimes you do a small step and you have the feeling that everything has changed but it’s not exactly the reality."
"But it’s a sport and in the end we can accept that one is doing a better job than the other from weekend to weekend. I think that we have a positive competition and this is also helping us to improve," Vasseur said.
Less tyre degradation for Ferrari
That Ferrari now has Mercedes' second place in the constructors' championship in its sights is not just down to the drivers. The technical team also gets kudos from Vasseur, as it is increasingly managing to keep the tyres okay for longer periodes in the race. At the beginning of the season, Ferrari was actually experiencing high tyre degradation. "TI think at the end of the day we did a good job on this side," Vasseur stated.