Fred Vasseur, Ferrari Formula 1 team principal, believes that the team can’t “postpone the fight” with its rivals. His comments came after Mercedes continued commitment to its current challenger.
Like many teams, Ferrari shifted its wind tunnel focus on 2024. But Vasseur doesn’t want to leave the space to Mercedes.
“You don’t have to postpone the fight, the fight is with Mercedes today, and we have to take it,” said the Frenchman.
“It’s always the best way to prepare for the future, for the mindset of the team, for everybody to be into the fight is crucial. And we’ll keep this fight until the end of the season.”
He added: “It’s never a sacrifice, because I think that performance is coming from performance. It’s too late to go into the wind tunnel for this season, but what we can do on the current car will help us for next year.”
In recent upgrades, Ferrari introduced a new floor in Suzuka for SF-23. Vasseur, however, downplayed its contribution in the last race in Japan.
“What you can bring on the car is a matter of potential,” he said. “The deg is another story, and we don’t have to mix everything.
“But for sure, potential is always helpful. And for less than a tenth we would have been on the first row. And then it’s a different story, you have clean air and so on.
“Sometimes small details are making, at the end of the race, a mega huge difference. Because when you are in the fight you have to copy the others. It’s a different story.
“But I think it will be like this until the end of the season. We made the pole position in Monza for one hundredth, last week in Singapore for five hundredths, something like this, [in Japan] we lost the first row for five hundredths, and it will be a matter of hundredths for the rest of the season.”
Vasseur showed confidence in the team. He referred to recent good show of performance even before upgrades.
“We have also to avoid drawing too quick conclusions,” he said.
“Before the break, in Spa, we were also in good shape, but Charles [Leclerc] started fourth. He was theoretically on the first row, but he started from pole position and did a good race.
“As it’s a matter of hundredths of seconds, sometimes you do a small step, you have the feeling that everything is changed.
“It’s not exactly the reality and from race-to-race, and from track-to-track. Even the drivers, sometimes the setup is more fitting with Carlos or Charles.
“It’s sport, in the end, you can accept that one is doing a better job than the others from weekend to weekend. And I think that we have a positive competition, and this is also helping us to improve.”
