Frédéric Vasseur is working on changing Ferrari

Frédéric Vasseur knows all about pressure.

In January, he was named general manager and team principal of Ferrari, one of the most demanding jobs in motorsport due to the team’s popularity. But in 1996, Vasseur had started his own team and he said he sometimes struggled to make ends meet.

“I probably had more pressure when I started ASM 30 years ago,” Vasseur said in an interview about the team. “Every Monday I had to be paid by the driver to avoid bankruptcy.” (At that level of racing, the drivers pay the teams.)

When Vasseur, who was CEO of the Sauber Group and team principal of Alfa Romeo last year, was approached by Ferrari to replace Mattia Binotto, who stepped down at the end of the season, he had to reckon with the pressure he knew would come to stand. placed on his family.

“I knew I wasn’t going to be affected or scared by it,” he said. “It’s just more demanding and I didn’t want to expose them to it. For me it’s one thing, but for my family it’s something else. I had to decide.”

Vasseur said it took him a day because of his wife, Marie Laure. “I have four kids, my youngest recently turned 15, he goes to school and I knew it would be a big change for him,” he said.

“But my wife was more convinced than I was. She said, ‘What do you want? Why are you hesitating?’”

He said Ferrari was so famous that “it’s virtually impossible to say no.”

It was not an easy start for Vasseur. After the team and its driver Charles Leclerc, who hails from Monaco, both finished second in the championships last season, Ferrari were expected to challenge championship team Red Bull this year.

But after five Grands Prix, Ferrari is sputtering. It has one podium finish and is fourth in the Constructors’ Championship, 146 points behind Red Bull.

After about four months in charge, France’s Vasseur has had little time to impress the team or make major changes. “The main problem I’ve had is that I joined quite late,” he said.

“There were only four weeks between my first day and the launch of the new car. You have a huge wave of things to digest.”

Vasseur, who worked at Sauber and Alfa Romeo for about six years, said: “If you look closely, all teams take a long time to build something strong.”

“But when we were in a difficult situation,” he said of Ferrari, “the team’s reaction was calm, trying to understand it, to correct it step by step, not wanting to change everything right away.”

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner said he was surprised Ferrari had not been challenged this season. The car was fast over a lap in qualifying but struggled in a grand prix.

“You can never write someone off,” Horner said.

His team has finished first and second four times in five Grands Prix. “It’s the best start we’ve had and we feel like we’ve made a good step from last year’s car to this year’s car,” he said. “It’s the kind of move you’d expect.

“It feels like others have lost ground. I’m sure they’re working hard to address that, and big wins could come quite quickly. But we are surprised that others may have performed less than last year.”

Vasseur has been working in motorsport for almost 30 years. After founding ASM and winning the Formula 3 Euro Series title four times from 2004 to 2007, including with Lewis Hamilton in 2005, Vasseur helped create a second successful team in 2004, ART Grand Prix.

Vasseur helped Leclerc to the GP3 title in 2016 before guiding his first season in Formula 1 with Sauber two years later.

Leclerc has built a strong relationship with Vasseur, allowing the driver to “trust him completely” now that they are working together again.

“So far he has basically tried to analyze the situation as quickly as possible to make the best possible changes for the future,” Leclerc said. “Most of his work is now done.

“Of course I talk to Fréd a lot, and I know his mid- and long-term plans for the team, and I fully support him.”

But Leclerc is struggling. After crashes last season saw him out of contention for the drivers’ title, he has had three incidents this year.

He collided with Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll in the Australian Grand Prix on the first lap and crashed during practice and qualifying for the Miami race.

Leclerc said after the qualifying session that he was “really angry” with himself and that he “should be driving at a higher level”. He is 85 points behind Verstappen. After five Grands Prix last year, he led the championship with 19 points.

The question is how much time Vasseur will get to finally end Ferrari’s long wait for success. The last Constructors’ Championship was in 2008 and the last Drivers’ Championship was won by Kimi Raikkonen in 2007.

“It’s a nameless project,” Vasseur said of his plans to improve the team. “It will never be a Fréd Vasseur team.”

“It will always be the Ferrari team first. It will be my feeling, I will have to make some changes and the approach will be different, but the most important thing for me is to make sure we are going in the right direction. ”

Carlos Sainz, the team’s other driver, said he also had “a very good relationship” with Vasseur, but found the car “very inconsistent” to drive at a grand prix. His best finish was fourth in the first race in Bahrain and he is 75 points behind Verstappen.

Vasseur has acknowledged there is a “shortage of top speed” to Red Bull.

“We made up 50 percent of the gap with Bahrain, but the advantage is still there,” said Vasseur.

“We bring updates, but Red Bull is not sleeping either. They’ll get better, and very often it’s much easier to improve when you’re in their situation, when you’re confident, than when you’re chasing someone.”

He said there was potential in the car due to Ferrari’s pace in qualifying, performance Vasseur wants to unlock for the longer grand prix, where the team is having problems with its tire wear. Ferrari has qualified in the top three in all but one Grand Prix, but the team has failed to translate that into top placings, except in Azerbaijan, where Leclerc qualified first and finished third in the race.

Vasseur said Ferrari senior management, including John Elkann, the chairman, and Benedetto Vigna, the CEO, have not interfered in his decisions.

“I have never had such a relationship with the organization above me in the past as I do now,” said Vasseur, who was team principal of Renault and Alfa Romeo.

“I know that when I need their support, they are there. On the other hand, I have the freedom to manage the team in the way I need to.”

But then there are the adoring Ferrari fans to contend with. “It’s the only team in the world where they wait for you every morning when you go to the factory and wait for you in the evening when you leave. This is the reality.

“But somehow that’s good, because this gives you extra motivation.”