Two or three tenths behind. That’s how Frédéric Vasseur quantifies Ferrari’s gap to McLaren, urging the team to work on closing it. According to the Team Principal, there’s no particular area to focus on—not even ride height management, which has been widely discussed in recent weeks. Instead, the Frenchman is convinced qualifying will be decisive in determining the title in an extremely balanced Formula 1 where overtaking is becoming increasingly difficult.
The importance of ride height
“We’re running higher than we’d like.” Lewis Hamilton’s words to Sky F1 have brought the issue of ride height back into the spotlight. The step back after Friday in Australia and the Briton’s disqualification in China due to excessive floor wear had raised questions about whether Ferrari is having particular difficulty stabilizing the floor-to-ground distance. When asked about the matter, Frédéric Vasseur takes a moment to choose his words carefully, approaching the topic from a general perspective.
“Undoubtedly, we’d all like to run the car lower, because that way we’d have more aerodynamic load. But bottoming and the regulations are limiting factors. We all spend the weekend trying to figure out where that limit is, whether we can run lower or if we’re pushing it too far. With this generation of cars, performance is very much linked to ride height. It’s true for us as it is for everyone else—it was like this today as it was two years ago. If Mercedes and we were disqualified in Austin in 2023, it was because we were trying to reach the same point. It’s not a trait of this year’s car or of Ferrari—it’s the same for the whole grid.”
Improving drivability
The Team Principal draws a parallel with last season. The Frenchman urges Ferrari to repeat the comeback of 2024, while warning fans not to expect miracle upgrades: “If last year we made a good step forward between the start and the middle of the season, it wasn’t because we found a magic trick. You’ll never find something in the car that gives you three or four tenths. Often, when you improve, it’s because you put together ten different areas worth two or three hundredths each, improve the balance, and help the driver extract the most from the car.”
“Honestly, I think we weren’t that far off on Saturday, but for us it was very difficult to piece the lap together—probably the same for McLaren. Charles lost a tenth and a half at the last chicane and then another tenth in turn 1. I’m not saying this as an excuse though—I’m absolutely not trying to claim we have the best car, because the same applies to Oscar Piastri as it does to everyone else. When you reach a certain point, it becomes difficult to extract the maximum from the car. We need to improve in that—drivability, to put it that way.”
Exploratory phase
Ferrari is seeing its first steps forward in balance and in the synergy between Charles Leclerc and the SF-25, now more aware of how to fine-tune the car to best extract its potential: “I think he’s more satisfied with the balance he had today and overall this weekend compared to the previous one. We’re still in the early phase with the car, improving week by week, but probably everyone else is in the same situation. We’re just getting started, and every weekend we take a step forward. The most important thing is to make that step bigger than the others.”
Lewis Hamilton is having a harder time, once again following a different setup direction from his teammate. Fred Vasseur explains that the differences arise from the drivers’ personal preferences, but also from the team’s need to experiment to better understand the package: “The balance and related matters are tied to their choices. We’re still exploring a new car and taking different directions to differentiate the drivers. In Bahrain, though, I expect a different picture, because last month we had three days of testing there and we’re more in control.”
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A qualifying-based championship
Suzuka once again delivers a race with low degradation and few overtakes. However, the reason isn’t only in the track’s characteristics: “I think one-stop races depend more on resurfacing than anything else,” Vasseur reflects. “We ask Pirelli for a tyre with more degradation, but if every track gets resurfaced, it ruins the system. I think that’s more the reason we’re leaning towards single-stop races.” Still, Vasseur has no doubt about the need to focus more on qualifying: “Qualifying has always been crucial and the gaps are getting smaller and smaller. On top of that, when you’re in a group, you’re not only fighting the car ahead. It will be a qualifying championship.”
Overall, the Team Principal can’t say he’s satisfied with the start of the season, though he remains calm: “I’m used to it—even in the past two years, we started off like this. Of course, it’s not ideal and I’d rather win the first race than finish fifth, that’s clear. On the other hand, we mustn’t change our approach compared to last season. A year ago, we were almost in the same situation—perhaps even slightly worse in terms of pace—and the team’s reaction was very strong. We worked as a team and made small steps, one after another. We have to maintain that same approach.”
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