Ferrari Formula 1 boss Frederic Vasseur believes an “ambitious” approach is the biggest improvement he instilled during his debut year in charge of the team.
The Italian marque’s hopes of building on its return to winning ways in 2022 and challenging Red Bull were thwarted from the outset by an inconsistent SF-23 challenger.
Having arrived late last winter to replace the outgoing Mattia Binotto at the helm, Vasseur had little impact on the fundamental direction of Ferrari’s evolutionary 2023 car.
But while the team remained restricted by the constraints of its launch-spec package, Ferrari rebounded with a revised car concept to take the sole non-Red Bull win of the year.
However, Vasseur believes the extent of Ferrari’s progress through the campaign could be most attributed to adopting a more aggressive attitude compared to before.
“When you arrive in this group, you need to understand how the group is working before taking any action or decision,” Vasseur explained when reflecting on the campaign.
“The main topic for us and the biggest improvement we did the season was more on the approach and the mentality. I think that we took more risk, we were a bit more aggressive and this played a part.
“We have to be ambitious and not be scared of any incident or something like this, and I think we did a step on this.”
Vasseur’s strive to remove the fear of failure which had long been associated with Ferrari paid dividends as the side almost snatched second in the Constructors’ Championship.
The Frenchman asserts that the Maranello squad’s invitation to take more risks paid dividends as it added up a sizeable time gain that made a difference in a compact grid.
“When we said that we were in a tough situation at the beginning, we were probably two or three-tenths off,” he added. “We made a step of one or two-tenths. Now the grid is so compact and so tight that for one or two tenths you can change completely the physiognomy of the weekend.
“We brought an upgrade in Japan, but it was not a big one. I’m still convinced that it’s more on the track operation that we did the step in the last third of the season, much more than on the development of the car.
“In the last part of the season we were much more aggressive. And it’s a matter of tenths. You make up 0.020s here and 0.020s there and at the end, it’s one-tenth.”
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