Leclerc brushes off Vasseur exit chatter: “At Ferrari, everything’s louder”
Charles Leclerc isn’t losing sleep over the noise around Fred Vasseur’s future. In fact, he expected it.
Ferrari’s lead driver, now in his seventh season with the Scuderia, says the speculation that swirls around the team boss is simply part of the job when you wear red. The difference, in his view, is scale: every wobble becomes a crisis, every win a renaissance.
“It’s the way it is,” Leclerc said when asked about fresh rumours over Vasseur’s position. “I’ve been with the team since 2019, and I know these kinds of rumours are always blown out of proportion. Do I enjoy it? No, of course not. Nobody in the team enjoys it. We’d rather just focus on what matters.”
Vasseur, who recently signed a new multi-year deal, also received public backing from Ferrari chairman John Elkann. That should’ve quieted the doubters. It didn’t—because it never really does at Ferrari. This is the oldest, most-watched outfit in the sport, a sort of national team for Italy, and it’s been a long time since the ultimate trophies lived in Maranello. The numbers are seared into every tifoso’s memory: no Drivers’ title since Kimi Räikkönen in 2007, no Constructors’ crown since 2008.
The Hamilton effect lifted hopes sky-high for 2025. Bringing a seven-time world champion into the garage alongside Leclerc was always going to reset expectations. And while the team has shown flashes, the sting of underachievement lingers, which is why the glare lands on Vasseur first.
Leclerc isn’t pretending the scrutiny doesn’t exist—just that it can’t be allowed to knock Ferrari off its rhythm. “Whenever we do something good, it’s blown up into something incredible, but that’s also true for the opposite,” he said. “It makes the ups and downs harder to manage when you drive for Ferrari, but it’s also what makes it special. We need to make sure these things don’t affect us. I don’t think they did—Austin was a great weekend considering everything going around the team. We did a good job and we need to keep doing that.”
As ever in F1, the rumour mill doesn’t stop with one name. Christian Horner has been floated in the gossip columns as a potential successor should Ferrari ever decide to change course. On paper, a world championship-winning principal is an obvious candidate for anyone with title ambitions. In reality, it would take two to tango—and there’s little to suggest the appetite is mutual right now.
Inside the Ferrari garage, the message is consistent. Both drivers are publicly backing Vasseur, and Leclerc insists that support is genuine, not coordinated. “We’re speaking from our hearts,” he said. “These rumours are very unfounded. We didn’t need to talk about it together with Lewis—we’ve both known Fred for many years and we both trust he’s the right person to bring Ferrari back to the top.”
Ferrari’s path forward is painfully simple and brutally complicated at the same time: keep the politics at arm’s length, keep closing the performance gap, and convert opportunities when they appear. The team has the star power, the resources and—crucially—the continuity in the key chair. Vasseur isn’t new anymore. He’s in place, contracted, and backed from the top.
The rest is up to the stopwatch.
