Charles Leclerc says that he is impressed by how fast Frederic Vasseur has eased into the Team Principal role at the Ferrari Formula 1 team.
Vasseur was signed in place of Mattia Binotto for the 2023 season, with the latter spending four years in the position before departing the team at the end of 2022.
Prior to his new role, Vasseur spend several years heading the Alfa Romeo F1 squad, which included a season working with Leclerc when it ran under the Sauber name in 2018.
Vasseur arrives at the team Maranello squad a period of title drought, with Ferrari’s last championship success dating back to the 2008 season.
Although he has been in the position less than two months, Leclerc says he has been impressed by the Frenchman so far.
“What we expect from Fred, it’s very early days for now,” Leclerc said.
“What I can say is that it was impressive how quickly he introduces himself in the team, and straightaway he felt quite at ease and understood a team like Ferrari, which is not a given because it’s a very big team.
“There is also the engine department in Ferrari that we didn’t have to manage in Alfa Romeo. But yeah, he was at ease straight away.
“That is very, very important for the future. I’m sure he will do great.
“He’s really, really good at putting everybody in the right conditions to extract the best out of the people. I think this is going to be a big plus.”
Ferrari endured a difficult 2022 campaign as its promising early-season form collapsed and rivals Red Bull went on to dominate the championship.
Many pecking order predictions following pre-season testing have Red Bull still on top, as Ferrari looks to hone in on the Milton Keynes-based squad.
While Leclerc says there is still work for Ferrari to do, he says there were positives to take from the test.
“We’ve had a very intense three days of testing,” Leclerc reflected.
“The first day was all about doing big scans and trying to understand how well the data is matching with the ones we had at the factory prior to that test.
“They were matching pretty well, which was good news. [Friday] we had a bit of a difficult day trying to find the right set-up of the car.”
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