{"id":37467,"date":"2025-09-30T03:33:33","date_gmt":"2025-09-30T07:33:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/?p=37467"},"modified":"2025-09-30T03:33:33","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T07:33:33","slug":"vasseur-the-pace-was-there-for-ferrari-in-baku-despite-result","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2025\/09\/30\/vasseur-the-pace-was-there-for-ferrari-in-baku-despite-result\/","title":{"rendered":"Vasseur: “The pace was there” for Ferrari in Baku despite result"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Baku GP was a disappointing weekend for Ferrari, whose poor performance was somewhat overshadowed by Oscar Piastri’s crash and Red Bull’s triumph courtesy of Max Verstappen<\/a>.<\/p>\n

With that said, Ferrari’s weekend did not go entirely unnoticed. The Scuderia could only bring home a few points in Azerbaijan, failing to recover from a poorly executed qualifying.<\/p>\n

One difficult reason certainly isn’t a reason to panic or draw sensationalist conclusions, especially in the context of the Maranello team’s resource allocation. Their focus is, like most teams, on hitting the ground running in 2026<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Because of this, no significant improvements to the SF-25 are expected in the near future. What Ferrari will be concerned about, however, is seeing their position in the standings slip.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Vasseur reacts to Ferrari’s Baku GP<\/h2>\n

In the early stages of the year, Ferrari team principal Fred consistently<\/a> Vasseur advocated for the SF-25 and its untapped potential.<\/p>\n

It is important to remember that Ferrari were the favourites to challenge McLaren after last season’s conclusion. This expectation was maintained during pre-season testing, which only increased the pressure surrounding the team.<\/p>\n

Combined with Lewis Hamilton’s arrival, this generated plenty of excitement heading into this season. Ultimately, the team failed to live up to these high hopes – with McLaren immediately setting the benchmark<\/a> in Australia.<\/p>\n

Still, Fred Vasseur was in no rush to write off the season. The Frenchman was adamant that his squad would continue with their scheduled development plan and introduce upgrades throughout the year.<\/p>\n

This level-headedness paid off in 2024, when Ferrari came within touching distance of the constructors title. Unfortunately for the Scuderia, relatively little progress has been achieved this season. McLaren<\/a> are several steps away, and Red Bull<\/a> are beginning to find their feet after a series of floor updates.<\/p>\n

Perhaps because of this context, there is growing scepticism about the SF-25’s chances of ending the year second in the constructors.<\/p>\n

Speaking after Baku, however, Vasseur was adamant the SF-25’s unrealised speed:<\/p>\n

“The main regret is for yesterday. Because we had the pace to do a much better job in qualifying and that\u2019s where the weekend got away from us.<\/em><\/p>\n

“It\u2019s encouraging that the pace was there,\u00a0 but frustrating that we did not capitalise on it because you have two parts of the job.<\/em><\/p>\n

“One is pure performance and the other is your execution. In terms of performance we made a step forward after Spa. But to be P10 and P12 yesterday was not what we expected.<\/em><\/p>\n

“Now we need to understand what we could have done better. Because we made some mistake, some poor choices.”<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Ferrari face challenges in battle for P2<\/h4>\n

Having gone almost twenty years without a World Championship, Ferrari only have one objective for next year – taking the crown. At the bare minimum, they want to be fighting for wins and establish themselves as contenders for the next regulatory cycle.<\/p>\n

In this sense, Ferrari acknowledge the best they can accomplish in 2025 is second – which certainly wasn’t their objective before the season commenced.<\/p>\n

At the same time, the Maranello-based operation still understand the importance of ending the year strongly. If they slip further in the Championship to 4th place, it would leave a sour taste in the final year of these regulations.<\/p>\n

It would also heighten the pressure for 2026, which is already a season where all eyes will be heavily scrutinising Fred Vasseur’s team. Vassuer, to his credit, has successfully overseen a few tricky periods at the Scuderia since taking charge.<\/p>\n

Whether he is capable of pushing Ferrari to new heights over the next eighteen months, however, remains to be determined.<\/p>\n

Main photo: Ferrari media gallery<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Baku GP was a disappointing weekend for Ferrari, whose poor performance was somewhat overshadowed by Oscar Piastri’s crash and Red Bull’s triumph courtesy of Max Verstappen. With that said, Ferrari’s weekend did not go entirely unnoticed. The Scuderia could only bring home a few points in Azerbaijan, failing to recover from a poorly executed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4927,"featured_media":37483,"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":[445,2452,84,438,76],"class_list":["post-37467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-formula-1","category-news","tag-charles-leclerc","tag-f1-2025-season","tag-ferrari","tag-fred-vasseur","tag-lewis-hamilton"],"modified_by":"Jaden Diaz-Ndisang","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37467","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=37467"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37467\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37486,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37467\/revisions\/37486"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}