Ferrari Team Principal Frederic Vasseur is optimistic that it is no longer in a “useless” position against Red Bull in Formula 1 but admits there is work to close the gap.
Ferrari placed an onus on building a more predictable car this season that avoided the volatile swings in competitiveness that its predecessor was susceptible to.
Following positive assessments regarding the compliance of the SF-24 in testing, the Italian marque has begun the latest season as Red Bull’s closest challenger.
Charles Leclerc has split the two Red Bulls on the grid in the first two rounds, while the Monegasque replicated Carlos Sainz’s third-place finish in Bahrain in Jeddah.
However, Red Bull continued to remain the benchmark as Max Verstappen sauntered unopposed to a ninth straight win, with Leclerc ending up a distant 18.8s back.
Reflecting on Ferrari’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix which also saw debutant Oliver Bearman take seventh, Vasseur admitted there were “positive and negative” emotions.
“I think the positive is that in the race last year in Jeddah we were something like 1.1 seconds off and I would say that today we are probably as soon as we were in free air more four or five tenths off than something else,” he explained.
“The fact that we were able to do the fastest lap in the last lap with [Lewis] Hamilton and [Lando] Norris pushing with Soft [tyres] was also a good signal of the improvement that we made on the entire management and consistency that this is good.
“Now I don’t want to be pessimistic because it’s a good weekend, we have to be optimistic and we have to enjoy this moment but it’s clear that Red Bull is still ahead, that they have in quality perhaps two, three tenths on us [in qualifying] and the race a bit more, but it’s difficult to estimate because we don’t know exactly if they were pushing at max or not.”
Nevertheless, Vasseur is optimistic that Ferrari has a much stronger platform to pressure Red Bull for victories even prior to accounting for developments to come.
Vasseur also hinted that the Maranello squad’s choice to opt for a more loaded rear-wing configuration came amid the realisation its battle was with the cars behind.
“The feeling is more positive that I would say that if you come back in this region, that you know that if you do a step, you can put some pressure on them,” he continued.
“When we were at one second, it was useless. And today, that was a good start. We can be there, we can fight.”
“I think Jeddah, it’s quite easy to overtake. And for them, they had a better top speed. It was a choice. But on some occasions, we’ll have other opportunities.”
Ferrari had highlighted that one of its main ambitions with its overhauled 2024 car concept was to eradicate the degradation that plagued its race prospects last term.
With that appearing to no longer be an area of concern, Vasseur refuted the suggestion that the expanded gap to Red Bull in race trim could be attributed to fuel levels.
“I don’t think it’s the level of fuel into the car which is an issue,” he addressed.
“I think it’s more the first part that we were into the fight and as soon as we had clean air and Charles was a bit by his own that he was able to catch up.
“Now the picture, it’s never easy to have a clear picture on race performance because you don’t know when the guys are pushing and so on.
“But if you compare with one year ago with plus or minus two-tenths we were at 1.1 seconds in Jeddah and Bahrain, we are today at four, five, six tenths, we did half of the gap.
“The performance is coming from everywhere. It’s never that you have one bullet [that] add five tenths on the car. It means that if we want to catch up, we need to improve on every area. I
“It was a poor approach last year. At the end it paid well that we did a decent step, but on every single area we have to continue to push.
“For sure the aero, it’s always key. We have upgrades into the pipeline, but I’m sure that as everybody that the most important is not to bring upgrades, it’s to bring upgrades that you can operate on the car and I think it’s well as we did a good job.”
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