Vasseur 'really convinced' Ferrari has everything to win F1 title

New Ferrari team boss Frédéric Vasseurs says the Italian outfit has "everything it needs" to win the F1 title but it has to put "everything together" to do the job.

Vasseur - the former team principal of the Alfa Romeo F1 outfit - has taken over the reins of the Scuderia in the wake of the resignation last November of his predecessor Mattia Binotto.

The Frenchman is at the helm of a frontrunning team, albeit one that could not sustain its early season momentum last season against Red Bull Racing, with Ferrari's challenge blighted by missteps, strategy errors and engine reliability issues.

But Vasseur insists the Scuderia is on a solid foundation and has all the tools and capacity it needs to bring the title back to Maranello for the first time since 2008.

"I'm really convinced that Ferrari today, and, for sure, my experience is limited to the last two weeks, but we have everything to win," Vasseur said on Thursday in his first meeting with the media.

"We have to put everything together to do a good job, but we have everything to be able to win.

"You can have a look on the results of the last decades that the wheel is always running, and it's just a matter of continuous improvement for me.

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"If we are doing a better job than the others in a couple of months or years, then we will be able to win. Nothing is set in stone. If you have a look at some teams that were in a very dominant situation a couple of years ago, they are nowhere today.

"It means that you don't have to take this kind of direction to say OK, it was like these last decades or the last 20 years, and it will stay like this the next 40 years.

"F1 is a changing world and we just have to be focused on the job, on the performance, and everything is possible."

Last year, beyond the strategy and reliability issues that weighed on its results, Ferrari was also comprehensively outpaced on the development front by its rival Red Bull, a weakness rooted in part in the management of its cost cap.

Vasseur suggested that the Scuderia will take a more strategic and measured approach to its car's upgrade cycles in the future.

"It's very often a strategic choice now with the cost gap to decide if you want to be more focused on the new car or next year's one," he said.

"I was not there [last year] and I wouldn't make any judgment of what's happened in the past. But we'll see during the season."

A main weak point last season was Ferrari's strategy on race day, with the Italian outfit’s fumbling calls costing Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz big points on multiple occasions.

Vasseur said that Ferrari was still in the process of reviewing last season’s missteps to better understand where changes and improvements must be made.

"When you are speaking about strategy or strategist, you only see the visible part of the iceberg.

"And strategy is not just a matter of the guy who is at the top of the iceberg. It's about organisation, communication, the flow of communication on the pit wall, and we are in the process of reviewing everything.

"We are trying to understand exactly what's happened on every single mistake that happened last year to try to know if it's a matter of decision or organisation of communication," he added.

"Very often on the pit wall the biggest issue is more the communication and the number of people involved [in the decision-making process] than the individuals.

"If you put too many people discussing about the same things, when you have the outcome of the discussion the car will be on the next lap!

"You just need to have a clear flow of discussion and communication between the good people at the right position. But it's a work in progress."

Ferrari’s runner-up spot last season in F1’s Constructors championship was a marked improvement compared to 2020 and 2021. But at the end of last season’s campaign, Ferrari CEO Benedetto Vigna said nothing but the title would be good enough for the Scuderia and that second place was "first of the losers".

Vasseur agreed that winning the title is Ferrari’s only target, as it should be.

"When you are in a top team, you can’t have another target than the win," he said.

"You can’t start the season to say, ‘OK I would be happy with P2.’ It would be a lack of ambition.

"I think we have everything to do a good job, and the target has to be to win."

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