The 2025 Formula 1 season proved to be a deeply disappointing campaign for Scuderia Ferrari, and team principal Fred Vasseur has already warned the Italian outfit that it will undoubtedly have to deal with “other issues” again in 2026.
At the start of last year, expectations around the Maranello-based team were extremely high, following a narrow defeat to McLaren in the Formula 1 Constructors’ Championship battle. However, Ferrari’s overall package failed to live up to those ambitions, and the Italian team went through the entire season without claiming a single victory.
The situation became even more complicated in China, when both Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc were disqualified from the race due to technical irregularities. That episode, combined with Ferrari’s strategic decision in April to abandon aerodynamic development in order to focus exclusively on the 2026 project, left the Prancing Horse struggling through to the chequered flag in Abu Dhabi, where the team ultimately slipped down to fourth place in the Constructors’ standings.
Although the upcoming season will mark the beginning of a completely new era, with a brand-new chassis and an entirely revised set of regulations, Fred Vasseur remains convinced that Ferrari will still encounter difficulties. “I think the philosophy of the 2026 car will be completely different,” the Frenchman told the media.
“Mainly because half of the car will not be the same. And the problem we had throughout last season will no longer be there, but we will have others, that is certain,” he added.
Ferrari’s Formula 1 cars in the current ground-effect era were largely designed under the guidance of Enrico Cardile, who is now the technical director at Aston Martin. Although the Italian engineer left Scuderia Ferrari in 2024, he was still responsible for the technical direction of the SF-25. When Fred Vasseur was asked whether the new car could be considered his “first” Ferrari, he jokingly deflected the question by highlighting the role of Loic Serra, Ferrari’s new chassis technical director.
“It’s more Loic Serra’s car,” Fred Vasseur said. “I don’t want to step away from my responsibilities, but if we talk about Cardile, then we also have to talk about Loic.”
“Enrico left the team in June 2024 and Loic joined in October of the same year. That means the car was already almost fully designed. That’s why I was a bit upset when the media put Loic under the bus at one point last season. I think that was a little unfair, but at the end of the day, next year’s car will be Loic’s first one,” Fred Vasseur concluded.
The 2026 Formula 1 season represents a clean slate for Maranello. With the technical leadership now firmly in the hands of Loic Serra and a driver pairing of Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc hungry for redemption, Ferrari hopes that the “new problems” Fred Vasseur anticipates will be far more manageable than the ones that plagued their recent past.
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