CHT wrote: ↑16 Jun 2025, 03:57
Luscion wrote: ↑16 Jun 2025, 03:09
catent wrote: ↑16 Jun 2025, 02:27
I wonder to what extent Elkann and Vigna are receiving feedback via Hamilton, which may be playing a role in their decision to potentially not extend Vasseur.
That'd be quite the story, if Hamilton is playing a role in the departure of the man who brought him in.
Purely wondering aloud, here ... not based on any reporting.
this is an insane take, why in the world would Lewis want Fred gone? they have a past with Lewis racing under him in his early career, he's said Fred is a big reason he's at Ferrari and came out this weekend very clearly defending Fred and saying he wants him at Ferrari. If anything it feels like Ham is pushing for an culture shift for Ferrari so Fred can just do his job instead of being bothered by the top brass
The worst case will be Ferrari getting rid of Fred and then Lewis announced his retirement shortly.
A Mike Elliott saga all over again?
Hamilton would not be a loss, to be honest. His behavior to date and public criticism are rather destructive for the team, and he is simply too slow. As for Fred, unfortunately he is failing in his most important task, which is to put together a great team of engineers and improve their efficiency.
Success in F1 depends on creating a team that is developing the best technologies and
methodologies to design a F1 car. To
make a championship winning car, innovation is key not only on
the car features but even more on technique
to develop at a faster rate and
even more important in pursuing the best
values and the best organization which
bring all the people to contribute on the
project as a collective effort.
In this respect, Ferrari has become worse rather than better. I am absolutely not in favor of constantly changing team bosses, because continuity and stability are important factors in a F1 team without which success is not possible, and it is a huge mistake on Ferrari's part since more than a decade to think that an F1 team works like a soccer team, but unfortunately Fred does not seem to be improving the team in any way in these important areas.
His plan was probably to attract people to Ferrari with a driver like Hamilton, as was the case with Schumacher back then. What he overlooked here is the fact that there was a huge difference between the Hamilton of 2025 and the Schumacher of 1996. While Schumacher was young in 1996, at the peak of his abilities and by far the best driver with a long and bright future ahead of him, as well as being known for his ability to develop the car and the team and someone every engineer wanted to work with, Hamilton was long past his prime, old, with no significant future and never known for his ability to develop cars and teams, which does not make him attract engineers. Ten years ago, at the age of 30, this would have been different due to his success and future prospects, but not in 2025.
But Vasseur is not bringing any improvements to the organizational structure itself either. On the contrary. As an engineer who has never worked on racing cars, he speaks with authority on technical development. Serra is the technical director of CHASSIS and therefore not the technical director per se, which means that there are essentially several technical department heads and no one at the top to set the direction and ensure that everyone is working toward that goal. Only Vasseur is above these "division managers," but he lacks the technical knowledge about race cars, which he has never worked on as an engineer and has not learned. This makes Ferrari's entire technical organization inefficient and slow because it lacks a competent "supreme leader" like Ross Brawn used to be.
The fact that people like Elkann and Vigna are putting pressure on the middle management level of engineers and demanding developments means that Ferrari is repeating the very mistakes it made before 1996 and has been repeating constantly since 2007. Here, too, it would be up to Vasseur to bring about improvement, but he lacks the power and authority that people like Todt, Brawn, and Byrne had in collaboration with Schumacher.
Perhaps Vasseur also needs a little more time to create such structures and organization. Unfortunately, however, it must be said that he has achieved very little in this regard so far, and my optimism that he ever will is limited, because, on the one hand, he lacks the power and, on the other hand, he is unable to break down the old and flawed organizational structures. Maybe because of his lack of Power.
