Fred Vasseur isn’t buying the idea that the 2026 championship will be shaped by whoever lands the first punch in Melbourne. Not this year, not with this rule set, and certainly not with the kind of mid-season performance swings he’s expecting once teams stop simply trying to make the new machinery behave and start properly weaponising it.
There’s a neat recent trend in Formula 1 where the season opener has doubled as a kind of early title verdict — three of the last four champions won round one. Vasseur’s view from Ferrari’s SF-26 livery launch was that anyone leaning on that stat in 2026 is about to have a very long year.
This is the sport’s most extreme reset in decades: new cars, new power units, and a wholesale change in how performance is accessed. The ground-effect era is already in the rear-view mirror, replaced by shorter, lighter cars with active aerodynamics via movable front and rear wings. The power units have flipped their emphasis too, running fully sustainable fuel and splitting output 50-50 between electrical and combustion power.
And the most interesting part, at least from Ferrari’s perspective, is that this isn’t just an engineers’ championship any more. It’s a systems championship — and drivers sit right in the middle of it.
“I think the key for performance will be the good integration between chassis, and for sure, development is key,” Vasseur said. But he pushed the point further than the usual “everything’s important” management line. In 2026, the biggest gains won’t come from any single trick component; they’ll come from how well teams blend all the moving parts — literally and figuratively — into something a driver can consistently exploit.
“Performance of every single area is key but, at the end of the day, the biggest challenge will include the integration of all the systems together – including the drivers, honestly, it will be a full reset for them on their approach,” he said.
That’s the shift worth underlining. In previous regulations, drivers adapted around stable concepts: a certain style of downforce generation, a predictable energy deployment philosophy, a familiar rhythm to how you built a weekend. Now the cars demand different inputs and different thinking. Drivers will be managing wings, judging when and how to use them, balancing engine management, and deciding when to deploy overtake modes or boost. You can already hear the radio traffic in your head: not just “tyres and gaps”, but a constant stream of mode choices layered on top of driving.
Vasseur expects that to bleed into everything — preparation, set-up direction, even how quickly a driver can build confidence across a weekend.
“It means that they will have to change completely the way that they have to approach the weekend, develop during the weekend, the way of even driving will be probably a bit different,” he said. “It means that this also for them will be a challenge and part of our job will be to give them the good tools to be at their maximum.”
In other words, the driver market storylines that normally get parked once the lights go out might carry real competitive weight this year. Getting a new technical platform is one thing. Getting two drivers to understand it in the same language — and give the team clean, actionable feedback while the car is evolving rapidly — is another. Vasseur all but admitted the human element will be a separator, not a footnote.
He also sounded, by his standards, energised by the uncertainty. “It is true that we are all starting from scratch, we are all discovering the challenges,” he said. “I think this is a good feeling… because that is our job, our DNA to challenge this kind of situation.”
That upbeat tone matters because the early part of 2026 is already a scramble. Several teams, Ferrari included, missed the opening day of testing in Barcelona on Monday — the kind of hiccup that would normally trigger performative panic. Vasseur wasn’t interested. His message was essentially: it’s not about day one, it’s about direction.
“Honestly, it’s far too early about expectation. We are there to work, to develop, to improve. Then we’ll see what is the situation in Melbourne,” he said. “Today, it was an important milestone to put the car on track without any issue. This is good, but we have a long way…”
That “long way” is doing a lot of work here. Vasseur is expecting a development curve that makes recent seasons look sedate, with many teams likely to arrive in Australia with a relatively conservative, baseline specification — the kind of car you build to learn from, not necessarily the one you intend to race by mid-season.
“I think the rate of development will be much higher this season than what you saw last year or the year before,” he said. “It means that nobody knows what will be the situation in couple of weeks…”
It’s an argument you hear whenever regulations change, but 2026 gives it teeth. Active aero and the new power-unit balance create more levers to pull, more correlation traps, and more opportunities for big gains — or expensive wrong turns. The teams that learn quickest won’t just add downforce; they’ll simplify the driver’s life while expanding the performance window. That’s where the lap time will be hiding.
And that’s why Vasseur is dismissive of any early coronation. Even if Ferrari nails Melbourne, he’s effectively warning that it won’t mean what it used to mean.
“Even Melbourne won’t be the end of the championship,” he insisted. “It won’t be the end of the championship that I think will have a huge rate of development.”
In 2026, the first race might tell you who turned up prepared. It probably won’t tell you who finishes the job.
