Ferrari boss Frederic Vasseur has argued it would be a “mistake” should the team think there is one single area it has to improve upon for the 2025 Formula 1 season.
The Italian marque started the campaign in encouraging shape as it secured two victories and nine podiums across the opening eight races with the revamped SF-24.
However, Ferrari’s season unravelled when an upgrade package in Spain induced accentuated bouncing, allowing McLaren to displace it as Red Bull’s main challenger.
But with developments correcting that misstep in Monza and Singapore, Ferrari rebounded to claim three wins in the last nine races to record its highest points return.
Ferrari’s resurgence transpired too late, though, as Lando Norris’ win at the season finale in Abu Dhabi ensured that McLaren bagged the Constructors’ Championship.
But while the side’s title drought since 2008 will roll into another campaign, Vasseur derived promise from how Ferrari reacted to the mid-season plight that it endured.
Asked what gave him optimism about the competitiveness of the 2025 package, Vasseur told media including Motorsport Week: “It’s not the performance of this car, because next year it’s a new project so we’ll do a decent step forward and I’m quite pleased with the job done at the factory.
“But what is giving me confidence is more the step that we did compared to one year ago, the capacity that we had to react in the tough moment of the season, because it’s where you can see that the team is working as a team.
“When you are winning, everybody is nice, everybody is a best friend and I would say that these kind of weekends are quite easy to manage.
“It’s when you are in the tough moment that the reaction is important and we reacted each time very, very well.
“In June we came back as soon as possible with solutions, everybody was pushing in the same direction.
“I’m quite also pleased with the reaction of the drivers who had a tough weekend in Vegas and they reacted very, very, very well and I think it’s why we were so performant this weekend.”
Ferrari striving to improve in all areas
Despite ending up 14 points behind McLaren, Vasseur is adamant Ferrari must bid to improve across all departments to be in the mix for the top prizes again in 2025.
Pressed on the main topic on Ferrari’s agenda over the winter, Vasseur replied: “Honestly, I don’t know because I think it would be a mistake to think that there is one thing.
“If you want to do a good job you have to be focused on every single pillar of the performance, on every single area.
“On reliability, it’s true for every single part of the car, it means that we have to improve everywhere.
“But I don’t want to do the list because if I start to do the list I think I don’t want to finger point someone or a group but I think on every single area, on every single department of the company, we just have to do a better job.
“This is not a criticism; it’s just that it has to be the mindset of the team that we have to come each morning to try to do a better job than yesterday to try to improve what we are doing hundreds of seconds by hundreds of seconds, but this mindset is the DNA of our sport and if we don’t have it, we are dead.
“That means that I will continue to push, I will continue to push all the employees first to be convinced that they are all a performance contributor at every single level and that on every single area we have to do a better job than 2024.”
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