Ferrari Formula 1 boss Frederic Vasseur believes that the team’s encouraging start to the 2024 season is “important” as it provides a strong base for future development.
Vasseur’s maiden season at the helm last term was compromised at the outset when Ferrari discovered that it possessed a car susceptible to wind direction changes.
Despite initiating a mid-season concept change that improved its fortunes, Ferrari continued to be laboured with the tendencies of its inconsistent launch-spec package.
The Italian marque therefore opted to commit to a complete revamp with its SF-24 charger to address the limitations of its predecessor and deliver a more compliant car.
Ferrari has succeeded in its aim and emerged as Red Bull’s most credible contender, with Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc bagging a podium each in the first two rounds.
But with Max Verstappen continuing to have a sizeable advantage, Vasseur has suggested it will be difficult to reel in Red Bull as teams chase more minute improvements.
Asked whether Ferrari had upgrades planned to help close the deficit to Red Bull, Vasseur said: “We have upgrades into the pipeline but I’m sure that we are not the only one.
“If you have a look last year, the picture, McLaren improved a lot during the season but I think it was more for them to unlock something at the beginning than pure upgrades and we improve but not by half a second. It means that we are at the point with this car and this regulation that you have a kind of convergence of performance and the rate of development is much lower.
“It means that it’s why it’s important for us to be competitive from the beginning, to score good points also because last year we had a poor start.
“I think today I am not focused at all on the championship but we scored something like 45 points overall and last year after three races we were at 25. It’s important to have a good start.
However, Vasseur has accepted that Ferrari’s more benign platform will enable the team to fixate on improving performance compared to problem-solving 12 months ago.
The Frenchman pointed to Oliver Bearman’s debut drive to seventh in place of the unwell Carlos Sainz in Jeddah as an example of Ferrari’s 2024 car being easier to drive.
“Also I think the fact that the car is, I don’t want to say easy to drive, and in any case it has nothing to do with the performance of Ollie, but I think the car today is easier to drive than one year ago, and this is a good base for the development, because the car is much easier to read for the drivers, much easier to understand where we have to improve,” he continued.
“And in this situation I think it’s a step forward for us in the overall picture.”
While Vasseur refused to be drawn on when Ferrari would introduce the first updates to its SF-24, Leclerc has ruled out substantial developments arriving in Australia.
“I don’t think we’ll have many things new in Melbourne,” he said. “So without new things in Melbourne, I think we are doing a good job by maximising our package. So that’s where we are.
“I think we’ll probably have to wait and see whenever we have new parts to the car, what kind of step we do forward. And hopefully that will bring us closer to Red Bull.”
