Ferrari’s team boss didn’t sugarcoat it. Fred Vasseur says the rumour storm that swirled around his job before the summer break didn’t just irritate him — it actively slowed down his contract talks with Maranello.
Ferrari confirmed a new multi-year deal for Vasseur ahead of the Hungarian Grand Prix, finally shutting down weeks of speculation that had flared up around the Canadian GP. Italian reports suggested the team was weighing alternatives after a winless start to 2025, with Antonello Coletta — who oversees Ferrari’s World Endurance Championship programme — floated as a possible F1 successor for 2026. There were even whispers of an approach to Christian Horner earlier in the season before his Red Bull exit.
Speaking to Auto Motor und Sport, Vasseur said the noise crossed a line, particularly when it dragged others into the crossfire. “Rumours caused the turmoil. I didn’t spread them, the media did,” he said. “When these rumours first appeared in Canada, I was really angry because they went too far. My technical director Loic Serra was accused of not doing a good job, but the 2025 car was practically finished when Loic started working for us [in October]. The story with Charles Leclerc was similar. Some people regularly wrote that Charles was going to Mercedes. No one cared that he repeatedly confirmed he had a long-term contract with Ferrari.”
The Frenchman argued the speculation had real consequences. “Without all this noise, my talks with Ferrari would have gone much faster,” he added, lamenting what he sees as an increasingly aggressive online ecosystem “under pressure to generate clicks.”
The context matters. Vasseur inherited a team still stabilising when he arrived in December 2022. Ferrari was the only non-Red Bull outfit to win in 2023 — Carlos Sainz’s Singapore upset — and then pushed McLaren to the wire in 2024, missing the Constructors’ crown by just 14 points. That trajectory, Ferrari CEO Benedetto Vigna said after the renewal, is why the company doubled down on its team principal: a recognition of what’s been built together and a commitment to finish the job.
The Leclerc subplot was inevitable fuel for the fire. Despite signing a long-term extension in early 2024, the Monegasque was repeatedly linked with moves — Mercedes and Aston Martin got the headlines — even as he publicly knocked down each rumour. In Italy, Vasseur noted, “people tend to react more emotionally,” and that can rattle a factory if left to fester.
For now, the message from Maranello is continuity. Vasseur stays. Leclerc’s contract stands. Serra’s work is defended. The chatter will never really stop, but Ferrari’s response to it — and whether that early-season drought turns — will tell you far more than the noise ever did.
