Vasseur pushes back on ‘disaster’ talk as Ferrari staggers into season’s final sprint
Ferrari’s year has veered from promise to prickly in the space of a month, and the drivers haven’t bothered to sugarcoat it. Lewis Hamilton called it “terrible… the worst season ever.” Charles Leclerc labelled qualifying pace “f***ing embarrassing.” John Elkann fired a broadside from the boardroom, saying some people at Ferrari are “not up to par.”
Fred Vasseur? He’s not reaching for the panic button.
With two races left and 101 points still on the table, Ferrari sits fourth in the Constructors’ standings on 378 points, 13 behind Red Bull and 53 adrift of Mercedes. McLaren has already sealed the title, and Ferrari — the only team in the top four without a grand prix win — is staring at a winter of what-ifs unless it can stop the slide. Hamilton, still podium-less in his first campaign in red, is one of only two drivers from the top four teams yet to stand on the rostrum this year.
Vasseur, though, bristled at the notion this has been a write-off.
“For sure we are not in the situation that we didn’t score points the last weekend, but we were P2 in the championship two weeks ago,” the Ferrari boss said. “It’s not that it was a complete disaster. For me disaster is not the right word… Before this, in the championship we were in front of Mercedes and Red Bull. It means that it’s not so dramatic.”
That perspective has its limits. Ferrari’s unraveling was sudden and expensive. The team left Mexico a point clear of Mercedes for second place, then endured a double DNF in São Paulo — Leclerc taken out through no fault of his own, Hamilton retiring with crash damage. From there, the dominoes fell fast. Mercedes bagged a double podium in Las Vegas to seize control of P2, while Max Verstappen’s fourth win in seven pushed Red Bull 13 points clear of Ferrari in the fight for third.
When drivers talk like Hamilton and Leclerc did in Vegas, it speaks to frustration at pace that’s gone missing at precisely the wrong time. Vasseur hears it, and says the same fire burns on the factory floor.
“Now I can perfectly understand the drivers, they want to get more. And trust me that in the debriefing on the Monday morning at the factory I’m also a bit harsh,” he said. “It’s our DNA that we want to get more in any case… This is the DNA of everybody in the paddock, it’s not a drama.”
The trouble isn’t one bad Sunday — it’s the trend. Across the last two weekends before McLaren’s DSQ reshuffled the numbers, Vasseur noted Ferrari scraped just “six or seven points,” a return that torpedoed what had been a solid if unspectacular campaign. The car’s once-reliable one-lap punch went missing; the race trim looked like it was chasing its tail. That drags Ferrari into a late-season knife fight with teams that are finishing stronger.
There’s also the pressure that comes with the badge. Elkann’s post-WEC title volley — after Ferrari bagged a championship double in endurance racing — landed with a thud in F1, where patience is never in long supply. Ferrari’s leadership wants the same ruthless execution it’s getting at Le Mans, and right now F1 feels like the program stuck between direction and delivery.
None of that absolves the task at hand. Ferrari’s margins are now slim. Third is there to be clawed back from Red Bull; second is a long shot without help from elsewhere. The fact the team has no victory to lean on only sharpens the narrative — because at Maranello, a season without a win is never just a footnote.
Still, for all the noise, Vasseur’s line hasn’t wavered. He calls the last stretch bad, not fatal. He points out Ferrari were second not long ago, which is true. He insists the response is internal, not theatrical.
Whether that’s enough to calm the waters depends on the final two Sundays. One clean, high-scoring weekend can rewrite the tone of a season. Two would change the mood entirely. Failing that, the scoreboard won’t care how loudly the paddock debates what went wrong.
Vasseur doesn’t do melodrama. The tifosi don’t do patience. Somewhere between those two truths, Ferrari has to find a finish worthy of the badge — and give its drivers a car that lets their words, finally, cool down.
