Ferrari continues to have strong confidence in Fred Vasseur ahead of 2027, with no concrete search under way for a replacement and Christian Horner not currently considered an option for the team principal role. Despite the renewed speculation surrounding Maranello, the internal picture appears considerably more stable than the one being portrayed outside the team.
Recent rumours have placed Fred Vasseur firmly back at the centre of the Formula 1 conversation. However, the indications from Maranello point in a different direction. Ferrari remains strongly supportive of the French manager, and there is currently no alternative candidate being actively considered to lead the Scuderia.
That does not mean everything is considered perfect or that Fred Vasseur’s work will escape evaluation. Certain issues will inevitably be discussed towards the end of the year. But there is a substantial difference between assessing how an organisation is performing and already beginning the process of identifying the person who will lead it next.
As things stand, Ferrari is firmly in the first of those situations.
Ferrari rules out Christian Horner as Fred Vasseur frustration grows
Fred Vasseur has now shown his irritation with the continuing speculation more openly than before.
“We are not working with complete peace of mind,” Fred Vasseur acknowledged, explaining that a large proportion of the questions he now receives concern his own future and Christian Horner.
“It’s frustrating. We are fighting for second place in the Constructors’ Championship and we keep talking about this. It is not the ideal situation for the guys in the garage either.”
The Ferrari team principal then delivered his most direct response: “Horner is looking for a job, everybody knows it, and he is looking everywhere. What can I do about it?”
That response comes amid repeated speculation linking the former Red Bull team principal with Maranello, a subject that has also raised questions over how a potential Christian Horner move could affect Ferrari’s existing structure.
The answer from Maranello, however, currently appears straightforward: Christian Horner is not an option for Ferrari.
Fred Vasseur says speculation is affecting Ferrari’s serenity
Fred Vasseur’s comments reflect a genuine issue inside a Formula 1 team operating under constant scrutiny. At the same time, publicly acknowledging that external speculation is affecting the serenity of the organisation risks becoming a small boomerang.
If rumours are capable of influencing the working environment, then saying so openly can expose a vulnerability Ferrari would logically want to remove.
That is where the company’s senior leadership becomes important. If Ferrari’s internal position really is one of continued confidence in Fred Vasseur, with no talks taking place with Christian Horner and no alternative candidate on the table, then the priority becomes preventing a situation perceived externally as temporary from producing genuine consequences inside the team.
Ferrari has already undergone significant organisational change during Fred Vasseur’s tenure, with the French manager attempting to reshape the technical structure around him. That process has included several appointments and internal changes, including Ferrari’s continuing restructuring of key technical departments.
Communication has been one of Fred Vasseur’s weaknesses at Ferrari
Fred Vasseur has probably underestimated the importance of communication within Ferrari’s unique environment.
It is no secret that the Frenchman has never developed a particularly empathetic relationship with part of the media since the beginning of his time in Italy. He was probably not accustomed to operating in such an environment and may have underestimated how important communication becomes over a longer period when managing Ferrari.
That relationship could perhaps have developed differently with greater willingness on one side and less prejudice on the other.
Fred Vasseur was even questioned towards the end of 2023, at a stage when there were realistically not yet sufficient grounds to attribute deep structural responsibility to him.
On the other hand, his Formula 1 philosophy has always been extremely straightforward: performance and aerodynamic downforce matter more than luck or superstition. That attitude was perfectly illustrated when Ferrari selected 13 February for a presentation and Fred Vasseur dismissed any concern about the date by explaining that Formula 1 was about “downforce”, not lucky dates.
Performance, in other words, matters more than noise.
Will four years have been enough for Fred Vasseur?
None of this means Fred Vasseur has been faultless. He has made errors of judgement, some of which he has acknowledged himself and others less openly. He could have devoted greater attention to communication and avoided underestimating certain requirements that might be relatively unimportant at other Formula 1 teams but become far more significant at Ferrari.
That is still very different from saying that Maranello has already begun preparing his succession.
On the contrary, the current indications continue to point towards a strong position for Fred Vasseur, with no alternative figure Ferrari is actively working to install in his place.
The French manager is also fully aware that the lifespan of any Formula 1 team principal is limited by results. At the end of his fourth year in charge, a broader assessment will inevitably have to be made.
The results during his leadership have fluctuated. Ferrari has experienced periods of improved execution alongside weekends where weaknesses in the car have prevented the team from converting its work into results. The importance of execution has been particularly evident during previous phases in which Ferrari recovered performance through better weekend management.
Ferrari’s early 2026 gamble delivered progress but not enough
After a difficult season in which the team became progressively demoralised and introduced very few car upgrades, Ferrari chose to redirect a significant proportion of its resources early towards the new 2026 technical cycle.
That strategic decision represented a major commitment to the new regulations, effectively accepting that resources could deliver greater value on the next-generation project than on continued development of the outgoing car. Ferrari’s decision to shift its focus aggressively towards the 2026 technical reset therefore became one of the defining choices of the project overseen by Fred Vasseur.
The new regulations produced a step forward. It was not large enough to stop Mercedes, but it was nevertheless significant.
The frustration now comes from the way Ferrari’s problems continue to alternate. When execution does not cost the team points, the car can lack performance. When the chassis works more effectively, limitations from the power unit can emerge. At other moments, the situation reverses again.
That cycle has also become frustrating for Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton as Ferrari struggles to combine every element of performance on the same weekend.
Second place matters for Ferrari but is not a Fred Vasseur ultimatum
Keeping at least second place in the Constructors’ Championship is now Ferrari’s only realistically achievable objective for the remainder of the season.
There is no indication that Maranello has formally turned that target into a condition for Fred Vasseur to keep his position. Describing second place as an ultimatum would therefore be an exaggeration.
At the same time, losing that position would hardly be irrelevant. Ferrari exists to fight for world championships rather than celebrate finishing second, but retaining the position would still represent a meaningful result and allow the current structure to move towards what may become its most important examination yet: 2027.
The 2027 Ferrari will not simply evolve from the SF-26
The importance of 2027 comes from the nature of Ferrari’s next project. The new car will feature a completely new power unit and a different aerodynamic concept rather than simply being an evolution of the SF-26.
That would provide Ferrari with the opportunity to address limitations identified during the current season and establish whether the organisation assembled over recent years can finally challenge at a higher level.
From that perspective, it could make more sense to conduct a deeper assessment when Formula 1 returns to Europe in 2027, or at least after the first genuinely representative races of the season. At that point, Ferrari would possess much stronger technical evidence on which to judge the effectiveness of the structure.
Evaluating the project on a year-by-year basis instead would hardly demonstrate particularly robust long-term planning.
A Formula 1 team principal must always work under scrutiny from both results and the media. What becomes much more difficult is operating with the perception that the company board may reconsider the leadership structure every six months.
A victory in Malaysia would naturally reduce the temperature surrounding Ferrari again, just as happened after Barcelona. But the underlying position would remain unchanged: Ferrari is not currently working on a post-Fred Vasseur plan.
Not Christian Horner. Not another candidate.
Ferrari needs stability to recruit senior technical figures
There is also a highly practical reason why leadership stability matters.
A team principal who is continuously portrayed as being close to dismissal makes it more difficult to convince high-level technical personnel to join a long-term project.
Ferrari has already experienced situations in which uncertainty around Fred Vasseur’s position complicated recruitment. Building the technical structure has been an important part of his tenure, and the wider restructuring at Maranello demonstrates how lengthy that process can become.
Why would a senior engineer accept a complicated relocation, potentially leaving the United Kingdom for Maranello, without knowing whether the person who convinced them to sign will still be running the team six months later?
No new team principal, including Christian Horner, could simply arrive at Ferrari and immediately bring an entire group of winning technical personnel with him. Senior contracts have become increasingly long, while gardening-leave periods mean the effects of major management changes can now take years to become visible.
If Ferrari genuinely believes in Fred Vasseur, as the current indications suggest, the logical consequence would therefore be to protect that stability and allow him to finish building the organisation.
The bigger Ferrari question is Fred Vasseur’s autonomy
One issue remains, and it may ultimately be even more important than the identity of the person running Ferrari: the relationship between the Formula 1 operation and the company’s senior corporate management.
The relationship between Fred Vasseur and Ferrari chief executive Benedetto Vigna has long been described as not always entirely natural. They are two personalities and two managers who come from very different professional backgrounds.
Beyond personality, however, the more important issue is the operating model between corporate management and sporting management.
That is where the debate surrounding Fred Vasseur becomes considerably more interesting than simply asking who might replace him.
There is currently no designated successor and no search taking place. Christian Horner is not an option.
Fred Vasseur has shown weaknesses, particularly in communication, but reducing Ferrari’s difficulties to the simplistic portrayal of an incapable team principal would ignore the larger organisational question.
If Ferrari continues to support the French manager, the real test will concern the authority and autonomy he is actually given to finish constructing his organisation.
Changing the person at the top while leaving the status and powers of the team principal unchanged would achieve very little.
If the individual leading Ferrari’s Formula 1 team does not possess enough autonomy to build the structure required, while the greatest decision-making authority remains removed from the everyday realities of Formula 1 competition, sustained progress against exceptionally strong rivals becomes much harder to achieve.
Ferrari is competing against organisations whose leaders have spent years building technical and political influence, highly developed structures and, above all, continuity.
For now, therefore, Fred Vasseur’s situation appears considerably less uncertain than the external noise might suggest. Ferrari continues to place strong confidence in its team principal, Christian Horner has been ruled out and there is currently no other candidate being actively considered.
