Meanwhile, quotes from Fred Vasseur suggest Ferrari are in no rush to take drastic measures in testing.
The 57-year-old points to the budget gap as a factor to consider when charting this year’s upgrade plan:
“If a team starts introducing four or five updates in the first races,” he told Gazzetta.
“Or if, for example, they have to send a new floor to a distant race like Japan or China – they’re burning through half their development budget at the start of the year.
“It will therefore be important to carefully evaluate step by step what to do, based on where we are.
“Whoever is ahead of everyone in Melbourne, at the first race, won’t necessarily have the winning car of the year.”
Avoiding mistakes of the past
Ferrari know better than most teams about how deceptive the first races of the year can be. At the beginning of the 2022 regulations, for example, the Maranello team was flying high.
Two wins and one second place for Leclerc in the opening three rounds, alongside DNFs for Verstappen in Australia in Bahrain, painted a very positive picture for the season ahead.
Within a few months, however, Red Bull not only out-developed their Italian rivals, but also eliminated all reliability issues – whereas Ferrari suffered a series of devastating retirements in Spain and Baku.
Moreover, the last set of regulations showed the price of investing in the pursuit of a flawed concept.
Mercedes in 2022, Aston Martin in 2023 and even Red Bull in 2024 were headline examples of wasting resources on upgrades that were taking the car in the wrong direction.
Ferrari themselves faced this issue during the European leg of the 2024 season, with updates at the Spanish GP derailing the team’s progress that season.
Eager to avoid this fate over the next twelve months, Fred Vasseur has reason to exercise a measured approach. The question is whether the work fundamentals being developed at the factory in Maranello are strong enough to build upon.
Main photo: Ferrari Media Gallery
