Ferrari boss Frederic Vasseur has urged caution over the team’s 2024 Formula 1 title chances as he expects Red Bull to bounce back stronger from its Monaco woes.
Red Bull opened the current campaign with four victories from the opening five races and three 1-2 finishes to maintain its record dominance with ground effect cars.
However, recent developments have witnessed McLaren and Ferrari slash the champion’s advantage to take respective wins in Miami and Monaco during this month.
The Maranello-based squad’s second triumph this term and Red Bull’s struggle to sixth with Max Verstappen has seen the gap in the championship close to 24 points.
Verstappen conceded through the Monte Carlo weekend that Red Bull’s recurring weakness absorbing bumps or kerbs has been exposed now the grid has converged.
But while the Dutchman expects more challenging weekends to come, Vasseur has quashed the notion that Red Bull had taken its pre-eminence for granted this term.
“First, I never said that Red Bull was champion after six races and I won’t say today that it won’t be the case,” the Frenchman contended.
“We have still 17 races to go or 16, I don’t know. Probably that you can still score 500 points in the end, it means that nothing is done in one direction or the other.
“But I’m sure that Red Bull and Max, they never considered that they were already champion.
“And it’s probably part also of the game that you need always to do more, to push more, and if you consider at one stage that now it’s okay, I’m there, that you are dead.
“And it’s the DNA of what we are doing. And I’m convinced that Red Bull is not in there.”
Vasseur has also not discounted McLaren from being involved in the fight, with the Woking-based squad victorious in Miami and taking podiums in the last two races.
Asked about Red Bull being viewed as Ferrari’s main contender rather than McLaren, he said: “It’s not me, I’m not speaking about that we are fighting with McLaren or Red Bull.
“First, I’m only focused on myself. I don’t care about the others, the target is to do a good job, to improve the car, to do a good job with the drivers.
“Then we are fighting with the guys who are with us on the grid and I’m not focused at all on someone because we have still 17 races to go.
“McLaren is a contender, for sure. Today we were 1-3, they were 2-4, we had exactly the same pace.
“I think yesterday it was a matter of 1-10, and they were in front of us last week in Imola, and it will be like this until the end.
“I was not thinking about Red Bull and I’m not doing fixation on Red Bull at the moment.”
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