{"id":22292,"date":"2024-07-23T05:21:08","date_gmt":"2024-07-23T09:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/?p=22292"},"modified":"2024-07-23T05:21:19","modified_gmt":"2024-07-23T09:21:19","slug":"vasseur-defends-ferrari-development-record","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2024\/07\/23\/vasseur-defends-ferrari-development-record\/","title":{"rendered":"Fred Vasseur defends Ferrari development record"},"content":{"rendered":"

After a promising start to the year, Ferrari<\/a> find themselves in familiar territory – losing ground in the development race<\/strong>. The upgrades introduced in Spain have triggered the team’s relative decline, with the SF-24 relegated to the fourth-fastest car. However, team principal Fred Vasseur sees the situation from a different perspective.<\/p>\n

Vasseur: Ferrari have done “a decent job”<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The Hungarian GP was a disappointing, though at least not catastrophic, race for the Scuderia.<\/p>\n

Leclerc and Sainz<\/a> showed solid enough pace, taking home points for the team during a relatively anonymous weekend.<\/p>\n

With that said, the Hungaroring is a circuit that – in light of Ferrari’s recent struggles – should have suited the SF-24 well.<\/p>\n

Therefore, the performance gap to McLaren, Red Bull and Mercedes is significant.<\/p>\n

After all, it seems likely the deficit between Ferrari<\/a> and other top teams will increase at other circuits.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Despite this, Fred Vasseur believes the development from Maranello has been praiseworthy over the last year:<\/p>\n

“At the end, we had quite strong pace on Sunday,” MotorsportWeek<\/a> quotes him as saying.<\/em><\/p>\n

“Last year, we finished 65 seconds behind Red Bull, and this weekend, we are 20 seconds behind the leader…<\/em><\/p>\n

“I think, in the last 12 months, we did a decent job<\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n

“Now, it\u2019s not enough – it\u2019s clear that McLaren was faster than us. And they were faster than us by two or three-tenths all the weekend.<\/em><\/p>\n

“But looking after where we are coming back and the last two or three events, we did a good recovery<\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n

“And now let\u2019s be focused on the next one. We need to do a step in performance, but we are on the right way.”<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Of course, Ferrari’s team principal should hardly be expected to disparage their personnel’s efforts in the factory.<\/p>\n

Maintaining high morale is always important but is especially necessary during times of hardship.<\/p>\n

Still, it must be said that Vasseur’s comments are a very lenient analysis of the current trajectory<\/strong> at the Scuderia.<\/p>\n

Having started 2024 as the closest challengers to Red Bull<\/a>, Ferrari are now the slowest of the front-running teams.<\/p>\n

Had Ferrari maintained their early-season form and introduced effective upgrades<\/strong>, they could legitimately be leading the Constructors Championship.<\/p>\n

Considering the relatively limited impact of Red Bull’s recent updates<\/a>, there is also reason to believe they can be vulnerable in what remains of 2024.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately for Ferrari, it seems they will not be the team to capitalise on the reigning Champion’s struggles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After a promising start to the year, Ferrari find themselves in familiar territory – losing ground in the development race. The upgrades introduced in Spain have triggered the team’s relative decline, with the SF-24 relegated to the fourth-fastest car. However, team principal Fred Vasseur sees the situation from a different perspective. Vasseur: Ferrari have done […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4927,"featured_media":22249,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[2220,68,84,438],"class_list":["post-22292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-formula-1","category-news","tag-2024-formula-1-season","tag-f1","tag-ferrari","tag-fred-vasseur"],"modified_by":"Jaden Diaz-Ndisang","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4927"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22292\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}