Ferrari boss Fred Vasseur has urged media to curb its speculation surrounding the appointment of a new Formula 1 race engineer for Lewis Hamilton.
The Briton has been without a fixed engineer across pre-season, after the team shuffled previous incumbent Riccardo Adami to a new role.
At Barcelona’s ‘shakedown week’, Hamilton shared team-mate Charles Leclerc’s engineer, Bryan Bozzi, and for last week and this week’s Bahrain tests, has had use of Carlo Santi, the former race engineer of Kimi Raikkonen.
Hamilton himself acknowledged the “detrimental” side to not having a permanent engineer in place last week, with rumours still pointing towards the appointment of former McLaren trackside engineer Cedric Michel-Grosjean into the role.
When asked about the current situation, Vasseur told media including Motorsport Week that when speaking to Hamilton, the seven-time World Champion’s outlook was different.
“It’s not exactly the discussion that we had,” he said. “I think the collaboration between the team and Lewis on the pit wall is very good.
“It’s not that he was not committed, but [is high] in confidence and very open to the relationship.
“My feeling is very positive with this and we will continue to improve. The mindset is to try to do a better job tomorrow than today.
“I think that if we have areas where we can improve, I will continue to push in this direction, but Lewis is in a very good mindset.”
‘It’s never about an individual’ Vasseur perplexed by Lewis Hamilton speculation
Vasseur was further pressed about the fact Hamilton still has not got a new race engineer, and the Frenchman stepped in to make his feelings on the subject clear.
“Please stop with this story!” he urged.
“If you go into the paddock of 22 cars, you have approximately six or seven new engineers each year and the same with the Team Principals.
“I’m probably the oldest [longest-serving] one with Toto [Wolff]. You are changing three or four Team Principals each year and it’s not the end of the team.
“The team today is something like 1,500 people. It’s not about one race engineer.
“The guy that you see on the pit wall is leading a team of people working on the car and it’s not a matter of individuals.
“In F1, it’s always about the team. It’s never about an individual.”
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