Ferrari Chief Responds To Abuse The Team Is Receiving Ahead Of Saudi Arabian GP

Fred Vasseur has commented on the hate his team is receiving since the first race of the season, admitting he doesn't understand where it's coming from.

Let's get one thing straight, folks: it's not time to panic just yet. Yes, Charles Leclerc's Bahrain retirement was a tough pill to swallow, and Red Bull's Max Verstappen put on a masterclass performance in comparison to the Maranello squad, but it's not all doom and gloom. According to new team boss Fred Vasseur, there's nothing that can't be improved.

Critics have been quick to jump on the bandwagon, with former F1 driver Ralf Schumacher saying he doesn't think Ferrari can fight for this year's titles, and ex-McLaren man Jo Ramirez claiming "there is always something wrong" with the prancing horse team. But Vasseur isn't buying it. He's baffled by the criticism levelled at the team after just one race, and who can blame him? It's early days, F1 fans. 

Sure, Ferrari suffered their first retirement of the season on the very first race, and Leclerc has a 10-place grid penalty this coming weekend, but let's not forget that Leclerc was running in P3 before his SF-23 gave up the ghost. As he pulled off the track with a cry of "no, no, no!" he admitted that third was the best he could have hoped for as he was significantly slower than the Red Bulls.

“Red Bull seems to have found something really big during the race pace,” Leclerc admitted. “We are a second every lap off the pace, which is huge.”

Vasseur is unperturbed by the apparent lack of pace and reliability. 

“I’m having a hard time understanding how it is possible for the team to become a target to hit after just one race,” he said to AutoHebdo. “We know what went wrong in Bahrain, but there’s nothing that can’t be improved.

“The correlation between the track and the simulator is good, we are aligned.”

“I’d be tempted to smile if these statements had no impact on the team,” he continued.

“Personally I have no problems, I know what I want to achieve and I will do it.

“I hear from John Elkann and Benedetto Vigna every day, I know what they expect from me.”

Of course, it's not all smooth sailing after it was revealed that David Sanchez, the head of vehicle concept at Ferrari, had resigned and left his post with immediate effect. Vasseur admitted that this was "inevitable".

“There are people who were very close to Mattia [Binotto] and who prefer to leave,” he said, “it’s something that doesn’t worry me, and there are others who may have feared for their future for a moment.”

Vasseur has big plans for Ferrari's future. As for Laurent Mekies, who's been rumored to be considering a future elsewhere, Vasseur has made it clear that he'll play a big part in Ferrari's future.

"To have people who are unhappy, it's two different things. I think that it's quite normal to be unhappy when you don't get the results that you are expecting, and I'm unhappy

"But the most important thing is to work as a group, to work as a team, and to try to get the best out of this and to do improvement. 

"But leaving the company: it's another story. If you want to speak about Laurent, I don't know what's happened in the past with Laurent, but I've known him for 25 years, something like this, when he was at school. 

"I trust him, we have a very good collaboration together, and he will be one of the pillars of the future of the company."