The shock departure of senior design engineer and Head of Vehicle Concept David Sanchez, which was officially confirmed a few days ago, generated a lot of discussion and led to a wave of rumours that more key team members could decide to leave the Italian side.
The Italian media reported that race director Laurent Mekies also wanted to resign in order to work for the FIA, while other reports suggested that Fred Vasseur wanted to bring Haas technical chief Simone Resta back to Maranello given design personnel loss.
In an interview ahead of the second round of the 2023 Formula One championship, the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, the French manager pointed out that the situation inside Maranello does not at all reflect how the media describes it, while at the same time confirming that the performance and result in the Bahrain Grand Prix was far from what Ferrari wanted.
When asked to comment on the rumours regarding possible unhappiness inside Ferrari, Frederic Vasseur replied that it would be wrong to suggest that everyone was joyful following the Bahrain Grand Prix. At the same time, he highlighted that talk of major problems in the camp was wide of the mark as he clearly made it known that race director Laurent Mekies was very much committed to being a key member of the Maranello team’s Formula 1 future.
“To have people who are unhappy it’s two different things,” he said. “I think that it’s quite normal to be unhappy when you don’t get the results that you are expecting, and I’m unhappy. But the most important is to work as a group, to work as a team and to try to get the best out of this and to do improvement. But leaving the company: it’s another story. If you want to speak about Laurent, I don’t know what’s happened in the past with Laurent, but I’ve known Laurent for 25 years, something like this, when he was at school. I trust him, we have a very good collaboration together and he will be one of the pillars of the future of the company.” – the French manager added.
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Frederic Vasseur explained that it was a normal situation, encountered at any team, for there to be regular comings and goings of team members, but wanted to stress that the key figures in the team will not leave:
“Honestly it’s the life of the team that we are recruiting a lot each year and we have a turnover each year. If you want to speak about key people [leaving], I don’t think so. But for sure we will have people leaving the team and some people joining the team. It’s like this in every single team in F1. We are a solid group and we are building up a team for the future also, and the link is good. So no, I don’t think that key people will leave the team.” – Fred Vasseur continued.
Despite the fact that losing chief aerodynamicist David Sanchez was not what Ferrari wanted, Fred Vasseur did not want to provide more details about the circumstances of his exit:
“I don’t want to discuss about the terms of the contract and conditions of the contract because it’s something between the employees and the company. I don’t want to disclose any details. I just want to wish to David good luck for the future, that he did a good contribution to the team, but it is like it is. I don’t want to disclose any details on this.” – the Frenchman said.
The Italian media reported on a possible return of Simone Resta even since Mattia Binotto left the Scuderia and even more now that the Maranello team is looking to restructure its technical department. However, Fred Vasseur confirmed that he does not intend to take him away from customer team Haas.
“First Simone is the technical director of one of our customer teams,” he said. “He’s doing a good job with Gunther and the plan is not to do something on this side.” – he concluded, ahead of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.
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