Everyone at Scuderia Ferrari hopes that the arrival of Frédéric Vasseur as new team principal can give the Maranello team the necessary boost to be able to recover and return to the top after a few seasons full of disappointments. In summary, this will be the primary goal for the French manager in view of the 2023 Formula 1 season, but the new team boss will have to manage another rather difficult aspect: the one relating to Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz.
This is the view of German former racing driver Ralf Schumacher, brother of Ferrari legend like Michael and now a reporter for Sky Deutschland. The first problem, according to him, will be that relating to the risk of an internal conflict between Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc, mainly linked to the different preferences of Mattia Binotto and Frederic Vasseur towards the two Ferrari drivers. For the former team principal, according to Ralf Schumacher, the Italian manager showed more sympathy towards Carlos Sainz and was involved in some conflicts with Charles Leclerc: “Mattia Binotto was more of a fan of Carlos Sainz, who brought him to Ferrari – he commented – and Charles Leclerc suffered a bit from it“.
Now, however, the Monegasque will again work with Fred Vasseur as team principal, the same one who launched him in Formula 1 at Sauber in 2018 and who allowed him to quickly join Ferrari when the Scuderia offered Charles this opportunity following just one season with the Swiss team. However, for the number 16 things could not be all perfect as many believe. In fact, the latter has Nicolas Todt as manager, son of another former Ferrari team principal Jean Todt and who cannot be considered a ‘friend’ in all respects of compatriot Fred Vasseur: between the two there were some tensions before their time in Formula 1: “They were partners in ART Grand Prix, but they broke up. Now it will be interesting to see how they work together“.
Still on the subject of Sauber, now known as Alfa Romeo, the Swiss team is finally preparing to lay the foundations for the new partnership with Audi, which will start from 2026. For this reason, the new CEO is the now ex McLaren Andreas Seidl, a figure in whom Ralf Schumacher also believes a lot for a possible return to Formula 1 of his nephew Mick, even without stating it directly:
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“Audi is not set up in such a way as to want everything to be German – added the winner of 6 races during his Formula 1 career – and now they have time to sort everything out before 2026. I’m curious to see what ideas Andreas has for the drivers: Guanyu Zhou is more or less firm in his seat and also carries a lot of money with him, which until 2026 are not indifferent for Sauber. Valtteri Bottas, on the other hand, may not stay long.” – Ralf Schumacher concluded.
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