What is the boundary between defensive communication and a full-blown media dance? During the 2025 season, Fred Vasseur not only crossed that line multiple times, but turned it into a choreography worthy of a classical ballet: forward steps, backward steps, narrative pirouettes, and sudden changes of tempo. All this accompanied by the hope—sometimes explicit, sometimes not—that the public would forget the position taken two weeks earlier.
It began with the Bahrain tests, the quintessential neutral ground, where everything is still possible because nothing is verifiable. “We have opened a new development path; it was necessary.” A significant, almost solemn statement. Then, when the stopwatch starts to matter, difficulties arise, immediately diluted by the classic “it’s still too early.” Ferrari must “focus only on itself” and Melbourne “will be another story.” This was the opening act: no responsibility, no reference to rivals, just a promise deferred in time.
In Melbourne, the story predictably changed. But not as hoped. The results were disastrous, yet attention was immediately shifted: FP2 showed “potential.” Qualifying became a negligible detail, Q3 an optional challenge. “Ferrari can come back, rain or shine.” The verb “can” became the cornerstone of the narrative. We are not far behind, not seven tenths, it’s not over. And above all: “In China, we will see the real SF-25.” The truth, once again, was pushed a few time zones away.
In China, Hamilton won the sprint race, the highest moment in an otherwise poor season for the Briton, which foreshadowed a historic double disqualification. Yet even here the story was ready. McLaren’s advantage was suddenly downplayed by analogy: less severe than Red Bull’s in the recent past. It wasn’t the end of the championship. And watch the semantics: it wasn’t an “error,” but a “risk.” In Formula 1, victory belongs to those within a millimeter of the regulations. A statement made after a double disqualification sounded more like a philosophical justification than a technical explanation.
Then came Imola, and the SF-25, we learned, had been “90% completed by Cardile,” the engineer sidelined who was assigned responsibility for the car’s issues. A curious percentage, stated with casual ease, as if developing a Formula 1 car were like leaving a household appliance half-finished. Then Canada arrived, and suddenly the problem was no longer the car, the project, or technical choices: “We won’t win with these journalists.” Communication became meta-communication. The enemy was not McLaren, not the stopwatch, but those asking questions.
With the introduction of new rear suspension, the script became familiar again. “We are back on track.” “We are not that far from McLaren.” One tenth, maybe. Nothing major lost. Indeed, McLaren had been exceptional. The gap wasn’t structural, but a matter of “details and stability.” Words that, in Formula 1, mean everything and nothing at the same time, but always work when you need to hold the pieces together.
Then came Qatar, one of the worst weekends in Ferrari’s recent history. Here the final twist: “We stopped development at the end of April.” Information that retroactively rewrote the entire season. And to accompany it, the sense of being treated “like ignorant people.” Not clear by whom or why, but the message was sent: if you didn’t understand, it’s not our problem.
Now, the point is not to deny that a season can be complex, nor that a team principal must protect the team and project. The point is the constant narrative oscillation: bouncing between confidence and downplaying, between future promises and retrospective explanations, between technical responsibility and external blame. A media dance that, in the long run, tires more than a car that’s difficult to set up.
Looking ahead to 2026, the hope is not only to see a winning Ferrari—which is both legitimate and necessary—but also a Scuderia that presents itself in a more straightforward way. Fewer choreographies, fewer sidesteps, fewer time-bound truths. In Formula 1, losing is acceptable—but doing so while changing the music every three Grands Prix risks becoming the real structural error.
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