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In a move that mounts further pressure on Fred Vasseur, Ferrari's top brass, including chairman John Elkann and CEO Benedetto Vigna, have demanded a swift turnaround of the team's performance. The Italian team's 2025 F1 season has been a complete disaster.
This was the same team that almost won the title last season and scored the most points in the second half. Things have changed drastically this season as Ferrari has brought a car that is 99% different (according to Fred Vasseur) than last year's challenger.
This has not helped Ferrari, as the results show that the changes have flopped. In the first 8 races of the season, the team only has two podiums, and if we compare it to 2024, where the squad was already a race winner, this is a step back. The team houses two brilliant drivers, Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton, and it entered the season expecting a title challenge.
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The fact that such a challenge already appears to be a distant thought is alarming, and according to Motorsport, the Ferrari top brass is demanding a swift turnaround in fortune. Both the CEO, Benedetto Vigna, and the chairman, John Elkann, are putting pressure on Fred Vasseur to expedite upgrade packages in order to improve the car. The report states,
"The pressure from the top came because the team's reaction times are too slow: in the initial plans, the GP of Made in Italy and Emilia Romagna was supposed to be the beginning of the technical turning point. Part of the update package was brought forward in Bahrain, without taking great advantage, although the changes were significant. The tenth found was not enough to overturn the values on the field with the papaya machines unreachable."
It adds,
"The focus, then, had been shifted to the Spanish GP: in Barcelona, instead, we will only see the new front wing. It is an important change because it is imposed by the change in the FIA static technical checks that reduces the flexing of the profiles. Vasseur had argued that this step could realign the performances, since Ferrari was the team that had the most to make up on McLaren with the tightening of the rules."
Ferrari's history of swiftly changing team principals
The development is certainly an alarming one for Fred Vasseur, as the Italian team is notorious for giving a very short leash to its team principals. Since 2006, when Michael Schumacher left and the dream team started to disintegrate, Ferrari has slowly gone back to its old ways of not giving the team principals enough of a leash.
It started with Stefano Domenicalli, who led the Italian team after Jean Todt stepped away. Domenicalli was the head of the team when Fernando Alonso was the lead driver but would be told to step aside in 2014 after a 4-year run without any championship.
He was succeeded by Marco Mattiaci, who was only a part of the team for a year before he was replaced by Maurizio Arrivabene. Arrivabene was replaced after two failed championship attempts in 2017 and 2018 by Mattia Binotto, who was consequently replaced by Fred Vasseur in 2023.
If history is anything to go by, the French team principal would know that Ferrari is not a team where you get a long leash if you end up failing. It will be interesting to see what the rest of the year holds for the team.
