There is one question that inevitably returns whenever Ferrari endures a difficult weekend or a season that falls short of expectations: how much more time should Frédéric Vasseur be given?
Since arriving at Maranello at the beginning of 2023, the French team principal has become the central figure in almost every discussion about Ferrari’s future. When the results do not come, the conclusion can quickly become simplistic: Frédéric Vasseur has had time, Ferrari have not yet won a championship under him, therefore the project has failed. The pressure surrounding his leadership has only become more visible as Ferrari continue to face difficult weekends and scrutiny over their execution.
It is an understandable reaction in an environment such as Ferrari, where finishing second can often feel like losing. Yet it also risks ignoring one of the most important lessons from modern Formula 1: great teams rarely become championship winners within a few months. Before they can win, they must first build an organisation capable of winning consistently.
Ferrari’s own history suggests that judging the Fred Vasseur Ferrari rebuild requires more than simply counting seasons without a title.
Jean Todt shows why Ferrari rebuilds can take years
In recent months, Frédéric Vasseur has even been given the nickname “Napoleon” by some. It is a curious comparison because Maranello has already experienced the arrival of another small Frenchman who would eventually transform the team: Jean Todt.
When Jean Todt arrived in July 1993, he inherited a Ferrari that was a long way from the top. The team was unstable, had endured several difficult seasons and had gone years without winning a Formula 1 World Championship.
The results did not arrive immediately.
- Arrival at Maranello: 1993
- First Constructors’ Championship: 1999
- First Drivers’ Championship with Michael Schumacher: 2000
It took six years for Ferrari to return to the top of the Constructors’ Championship and seven years to bring the Drivers’ title back to Maranello. The championship Michael Schumacher secured at Suzuka in 2000 had not been created during a single season. The process had begun many years earlier.
Jean Todt did not simply build a car – he built a system
Jean Todt’s achievement was not suddenly discovering the perfect Formula 1 car.
He built a structure.
Jean Todt brought Michael Schumacher, Ross Brawn and Rory Byrne into the project. He established a clear decision-making chain, a stable technical department and a culture in which every defeat could become material for improvement.
That Ferrari lost before it won. It lost a great deal.
But each season left something behind that had not existed the year before. That is the fundamental difference between a genuine rebuilding process and simply changing the people in charge. Ferrari’s more recent efforts have also involved an extensive restructuring of the organisation around Frédéric Vasseur, making the quality of those structural changes as important to assess as individual race results.
Red Bull needed five years before winning its first F1 title
Formula 1 provides many similar examples.
Red Bull entered Formula 1 in 2005, but the team’s first World Championship did not arrive until 2010.
Between those two moments were several extremely difficult seasons, including 2008, when Red Bull finished seventh in the Constructors’ Championship.
Yet those were also the years in which the foundations of the project that would later dominate at the front of Formula 1 were being established. Adrian Newey’s arrival, the development of the technical department and Sebastian Vettel’s emergence were all pieces of a process that had started long before the trophies appeared.
If Red Bull had been judged solely on its 2008 results, the project could easily have been considered a failure.
Mercedes built its 2014 dominance years before the trophies arrived
Mercedes also had to wait.
After taking over Brawn GP at the end of 2009, the German team remained some distance from the championship for several seasons.
- 2010: fourth in the Constructors’ Championship
- 2011: fourth
- 2012: one race victory
- 2013: second in the Constructors’ Championship
Then came 2014 and the beginning of one of the most dominant periods in Formula 1 history.
From the outside, the change looked sudden. In reality, it was the product of investments, infrastructure, personnel and decisions made over several years. The championship-winning Mercedes that appeared in 2014 was the visible result of work that had largely taken place before the trophies started arriving.
McLaren shows why invisible work can matter more than immediate results
McLaren may be the example closest to the Formula 1 of today.
At the beginning of 2023, the team appeared completely out of contention. Within a matter of months, however, McLaren began an impressive rise that eventually returned it to the front and culminated in the 2024 Constructors’ Championship.
But that transformation did not suddenly begin during the summer of 2023.
It had been prepared through new technical departments, investment in wind-tunnel infrastructure and a profound internal reorganisation.
The public sees the fast car.
What is far less visible is the work that made that fast car possible.
The same lesson applies beyond Formula 1
This principle is not limited to motorsport. Successful sporting projects frequently require years of work before their final results become visible.
Liverpool and Jürgen Klopp
Jürgen Klopp arrived at Liverpool in October 2015.
He lost finals, came close to winning trophies and faced criticism because the project still seemed incomplete. Then came the Champions League and Premier League titles.
Before the trophies arrived, however, the team had already been completely transformed.
Ducati and Gigi Dall’Igna
Ducati also needed years to return to the top of MotoGP.
The World Championship won by Francesco Bagnaia in 2022 had begun taking shape much earlier, through the technical work led by Gigi Dall’Igna, the seasons of progress with Andrea Dovizioso and an organisation that gradually became increasingly competitive.
Winning is often the final step of a process that started a long time before.
Time cannot become an excuse for Fred Vasseur
This is where the discussion inevitably returns to Frédéric Vasseur.
Saying that a Formula 1 team needs time does not mean turning time itself into a justification for failure.
There is an enormous difference between spending five years building a championship-winning organisation and losing five years without building anything.
The correct question, therefore, is not simply: Has Frédéric Vasseur had enough time?
The more meaningful question is what evidence his work has left behind.
What has actually changed during Fred Vasseur’s Ferrari rebuild?
The assessment must go considerably deeper than Sunday’s finishing position.
Is Ferrari better organised today than it was in 2023? Are responsibilities inside the team clearer? Has the technical structure become stronger? Is Maranello able to attract high-level engineers? Are mistakes being corrected, or do the same problems continue to appear? Has car development become more effective?
These are the indicators that reveal whether a genuine rebuilding process is taking place. Ferrari’s decision to make major structural and technical changes in recent seasons, including the radical shift of resources towards the 2026 technical project, must ultimately be judged by whether those decisions create lasting competitive progress.
The same applies to the development process itself. Ferrari’s technical evolution can be followed in greater depth through the site’s Ferrari technical analysis coverage, where the effectiveness of upgrades, car characteristics and development decisions provides another way of measuring whether the organisation is moving forward.
The World Championship comes only at the end of that process.
Ferrari has a problem that no other F1 team experiences in quite the same way
There is, however, one characteristic that makes Ferrari different.
At Maranello, time seems to move more quickly.
Every winter is expected to become the winter of rebirth. Every new Formula 1 car is expected to be the one that finally delivers. Every season without a championship immediately creates doubts over whether somebody needs to be replaced.
That expectation is understandable because Ferrari cannot think like a midfield team.
But it also creates an obvious contradiction.
Demanding a rebuild while repeatedly interrupting that rebuild means starting again each time.
Every new team principal must first understand the existing organisation, change it, recruit people, wait for those people to begin working effectively and then give them the opportunity to turn ideas into performance.
Changing the leadership repeatedly may create the impression that decisive action is being taken, but it can also mean returning to the beginning of the process.
Ferrari’s current development strategy will also shape the judgement on Frédéric Vasseur
That makes the coming phases of the project particularly important. Ferrari have continued developing the current car rather than drawing an immediate line under it, with Frédéric Vasseur explaining that a significant amount of present work can remain relevant to the next project. The reasoning behind that approach is explored in detail in the analysis of why Ferrari believe SF-26 development can also benefit the 2027 car.
This is precisely the type of work that cannot be judged only by the result of one Grand Prix. Development choices, recruitment, infrastructure, operational efficiency and the ability to learn from failures all become part of the evidence when assessing whether a team is moving closer to championship level.
Ferrari have shown at different points that execution can improve, just as setbacks can expose weaknesses that still need to be addressed. Previous periods of stronger Ferrari execution have demonstrated how operational progress can translate into better results, even when the underlying car is not necessarily the fastest package in Formula 1.
Will Frédéric Vasseur be the man who brings Ferrari back to the title?
Today, nobody can say with certainty whether Frédéric Vasseur will be the team principal who returns Ferrari to a Formula 1 World Championship.
It is a possibility, not a certainty.
But the opposite cannot be treated as an established fact either.
The mistake would be to judge an entire project simply by counting the number of years that have passed without examining what has actually changed inside the organisation.
Ferrari unquestionably have to be judged on results because winning remains Maranello’s objective.
But Formula 1 history offers a very clear lesson: almost no great team began winning before spending years learning how to become an organisation capable of winning.
For that reason, the real question is not simply: “How much time does Frédéric Vasseur have left?”
The more important question is this:
With the time Ferrari have had so far, are they genuinely building the team that can return to winning championships?
The answer to that question will ultimately define the judgement on the Frédéric Vasseur project far more than the calendar alone.
