Success in any sport requires both confidence and talent, but confidence is much more fragile. In team sports, coaches often need to change an entire culture to reverse a decline in confidence.
This is something that anyone who has run Scuderia Ferrari HP knows well. The members of the Ferrari F1 team are uniquely exposed to outside forces, as the team represents all of Italy, every two weeks, on the world stage. The gales that blow in from the media, from the huge fan base known as the Ferrari F1 team, are all too often exposed to outside forces. tifosias well as the upper echelons of the car company and its sponsors, can easily lead the team astray. This has happened many times before.
The current team principal is Frédéric Vasseur, better known as Fred and the second non-Italian to run Ferrari in 75 years. The first, another Frenchman, Jean Todt, won 14 drivers’ and constructors’ world championships between 1999 and 2008. Those were the glory days, with Michael Schumacher at the wheel. Since Todt left, Ferrari has not won a single world title. Red Bull and Mercedes have dominated.
So last year, Ferrari chief executive Benedetto Vigna and chairman John Elkann signed Vasseur. Vasseur, now 56, ran the Renault and Sauber Formula One teams after two decades of success with his own ART GP team in the junior ranks. He brought in Sir Lewis Hamilton, Nico Rosberg and several other drivers who have become household names.
Fifteen months after Vasseur took over, Ferrari is regaining its swagger. Operationally, the team is sharper and making fewer mistakes. Results on track have improved, despite some recent setbacks. But the biggest boost came in February, when Hamilton shocked the F1 world by announcing that he would be re-signing for the team. I left Mercedes for Ferrari in 2025. Twenty years after winning together in F3, Hamilton and Vasseur are reuniting the band.
“Lewis was an important symbol because he sent a positive message to the paddock about the future of the team,” says Vasseur in his bright, modern office in Maranello, near Bologna. “He had to make a decision: ‘Where do I have the biggest chance of winning the world championship in 2025, 2026, 2027?’ And he said: ‘Ferrari’.”
“For us, [Hamilton’s arrival is] It is also the best way to attract good people. We have good people at Ferrari, but I want to strengthen them.
“Most [F1 technicians] “We are in the UK. If you move from Mercedes in Brackley to Red Bull in Milton Keynes, the kids are still in the same school, in the same house. From Friday to Monday, you can change. When you come to Italy, it is a different story. You have to move the family; it is a life change. Lewis’ move will help us,” he says.
Hamilton’s signing has given a boost to the confidence of a team that had already been making progress. Victories in Australia for Carlos Sainz and in Monaco for Charles Leclerc, together with good performances in other races, have put Ferrari back in the fight, although not at the level of Max Verstappen and Red Bull Racing.
But the gap is narrowing. Vasseur has addressed the blame culture that was widespread on the team. He pushes engineers and staff in other roles he calls “performance differentiation” to be more aggressive and take more risks. They trust him to take the blame if things don’t work out.
“If you’re afraid of risk-taking, you’re stuck with margins everywhere,” Vasseur says. “And in our business, you can have five cars in a tenth of a second. I’ve spent the last 15 months pushing everyone. Because the more risk we take, the better we’ll be at risk management. I’m very pleased with the step forward.”
“At Ferrari we don’t have to be afraid of the consequences of what we do. The team, perhaps in the past, was a bit scared of external forces. But my job is to manage this; to push them to be a bit more aggressive. And then to take responsibility for the mistakes when we are in trouble.” [making] mistakes.”
What makes Ferrari unique (and its employees uniquely vulnerable) is that there is no respite. Employees live in the immediate vicinity of Ferrari’s base in Maranello and have to constantly deal with the consequences of results, both good and bad. Whether at the café, at the school gate or in the supermarket, Ferrari’s most recent race performance is always a topic of conversation.
For Vasseur, being French gives him a certain detachment, time to think and space to remove emotions from situations. He learned from Todt that for Ferrari to be successful, the team principal must act as a human shield against outside forces, allowing the team to get on with its work.
“The more emotional and passionate you are, the more fragile you are, because emotions go up and down. Monaco was a spectacular weekend for everyone. The following week, in Canada, was a disaster. But when you are at the match, you feel that the difference between Monaco and Canada is very, very small: a few tenths of a second,” he says.
“The perception of the results [is sometimes] “It is much bigger than the reality on the track. That means we have to stay calm. In both cases, you have to do the same analysis of what is going well and what is going wrong and you have to stay away from emotion. In this way, you build confidence.”
Ferrari has a strong record at the British Grand Prix, having won the race 18 times, including the team’s first ever F1 victory in 1951. With the team’s confidence growing, few would bet against them taking a 19th win this weekend.