Ferrari team boss Frederic Vasseur says a recent "top" signing for its engineering department won't become effective until 2025, a typical gardening leave delay in F1 that could hinder the Scuderia's recovery plans.
Ferrari has failed so far this season to fulfill the ambitions it had established for itself before the start of its 2023 campaign.
Its aim of fighting at the front the field has been thwarted by tyre degradation issues on its SF-23 car and by the lack of consistency of the latter.
The Maranello team's engineering department is undergoing changes with the departure of Ferrari's head of vehicle concept David Sanchez who is moving to McLaren, while the outfit's organization will also need to contend with the transfer to AlphaTauri at the end of the year of sporting director Laurent Mekies.
Vasseur is doing his best to get Ferrari back on track, but the Frenchman's efforts to turnaround his team – including through a recruitment drive – are being hampered by contractual technicalities such as gardening leave clauses linked to potential recruits.
"The issue in F1 is inertia," Vasseur explained in Montreal last weekend. "On one hand we look very agile. We change things, and overnight sometimes you have an issue, and you can fix it from one race to another one.
"But the reality of our business is that when you want to steer the boat a little bit, then we are not agile anymore. We know that if we want to recruit, we are speaking not in days, we are speaking in years.
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"I signed a top guy a couple of weeks ago to join in 2025. He will only work on the car in 2025 and 2026.
"It seems a long wait. But on the other hand, if you don't do it, it will be even worse in six months. You have to accept it as a basic of F1. If you stop at one stage, it means you will postpone again even more the impact."
Vasseur stopped short of revealing the identity of Ferrari's recruit, to avoid any legal hassles with the employee's current team.
©Ferrari
While frustrated by the delay, especially at a time when Ferrari is striving to regain its competitive edge, Vasseur isn't throwing in the towel regarding the development of its current machine which benefitted from the upgrade introduced recently in Barcelona.
"I will never give up this one because for us to fix it is the best way to understand and to avoid a mistake," he said.
"For sure when you are developing, you are trying to develop different areas, and you are trying to do a better job on the car. But I think the issue we have is not a matter of details.
"We are developing the car into this direction to try to get consistency, and to have something a bit easier to drive. Step by step we are going on the right direction."
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