Vasseur shrugs off Ferrari radio angst: “Judge us by Mondays, not the TV pen”
Fred Vasseur has no intention of gagging his drivers. In the wake of Ferrari president John Elkann’s stinging remark that some at Maranello are “not up to par” and that Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc should “focus on driving and talk less,” the team principal offered a calm counterpoint: emotion is part of the job; progress is made the morning after.
Ferrari’s 2025 season has been a grind, and the microphones have caught it. Leclerc’s post-qualifying tirade in Las Vegas — “My god, embarrassing, f***ing embarrassing… there’s like zero grip, zero f***ing grip” — summed up a weekend where the SF-25 didn’t land its punches. Hamilton, who climbed from 19th to eighth on Sunday night, was even blunter. “It’s a terrible result. There is nothing positive to take from today… I’m eager for it to end,” he told BBC Radio 5 Live, later clarifying he meant next season.
If Elkann’s message was for the drivers to keep a lid on the frustration, Vasseur isn’t reaching for the mute button.
“You know perfectly the system — the TV pen, five minutes after the race,” he said. “When you have a tough race, it’s very hard for them. I can perfectly understand the adrenaline, the emotion, and to have a comment that’s a bit harsh at this stage of the weekend.”
Vasseur would rather they’re honest than plastic. “I prefer to have drivers leaving very open at the end of the race when you don’t do the perfect job, when the car was not good — I’m frustrated — than have someone go to the TV pen and say, ‘the team is perfect, the car is good.’” The real measure, he insists, is the debrief. “The most important is not what they say on the TV pen, it’s what they do on the Monday morning with the team to try to do better.”
The Frenchman isn’t blind to the “mathematical” pain points that have turned recent weekends into missed opportunities. He cited a Brazil DNF, a Mexico penalty and Las Vegas as body blows in a run where Ferrari “didn’t put everything together.” But he pushed back on the idea that this is a freefall or that Hamilton’s “worst season ever” line tells the whole story.
“Mexico, Austin were probably the best weekends for Lewis in terms of pure performance,” Vasseur said, pointing out that Hamilton showed strong pace in FP1 and FP2 in Vegas before the race was compromised. “To start from P20 is not the best way to have good results.”
It’s an important distinction at a team now carrying the heaviest of expectations: Hamilton, a seven-time World Champion, paired with Leclerc, Ferrari’s homegrown spearhead. The lineup is irresistible on paper and, per the 2025 entry list, the Scuderia is exactly as starry as advertised. But the gap between lap time and outcome — the “mathematical side,” as Vasseur calls it — has widened at the wrong moments. That’s where the boss sees work to do, not a culture war to wage through soundbites.
As for Elkann’s broadside, Vasseur framed it as a nudge, not a rift. “For sure you want to push the team to do better, to work as a team,” he said. “We have to take it as a positive, supportive message. Today it’s a difficult weekend, but it’s more a technical matter.”
Ferrari’s public messaging is rarely quiet — that’s the price of the red shirt — and anyone who’s watched this sport long enough knows the pendulum swings between “crisis” and “corner turned” in a heartbeat. Vasseur’s job is to keep the middle ground: accept the frustration, protect the garage, and make the car quicker for Saturday and simpler on Sunday.
He’s right about one thing. The TV pen captures adrenaline. Mondays decide championships.
