Ferrari team principal Frederick Vasseur insists that all is well at Maranello despite recent setbacks and disappointing recent slump in mid-season form.
The year started well for Ferrari with victory for Carlos Sainz in Australia and an emotional home win for Charles Leclerc in the Monaco Grand Prix in May. But it's been more of a struggle since then.
While Ferrari initially appeared to have the second fastest car on the grid after Red Bull, they've since been overtaken by McLaren and more recently by a resurgent Mercedes, a setback for Vasseur and his squad.
“Internally, the mood is okay. For sure we wanted to get more," Vasseur insisted in an exclusive interview with the official Formula1.com website this week. "Probably we overreacted on some events, trying to get more.
"When you have an aggressive attitude, sometimes you get less. It’s where we have to stay calm," he continued, insisting that pressure from the ever-voluble Italian media wasn't going to change his approach.
“Somehow you need to have a kind of frustration when you’re not doing well because it’s also the best push to come back,” he acknowledged. “It has to stay under control."
Race weekends in Canada, Spain, Austria and Britain were particularly disappointing for Ferrari, as Vasseur freely admits.
©Ferrari
"We had four tough weekends, the mood in the team was not good as it was not what we wanted. But there was positivity about trying to catch up and understand why and fix it. The attitude is good.”
For Vasseur, the evolving team culture of risk-taking rather than playing it safe is more a matter of personal pride than results.
“If I have to be proud of something [it's] the fact everybody is more keen to take risk, a bit less scared. The consequence is the result, the fact that we are trying to change a bit the mentality.
“It’s a mindset for me. You can’t keep margin. You have to take risk everywhere," he continued. "This is a racing mentality. It is probably also the DNA of Red Bull. It’s where we need a step forward.”
“You have people who can look at the positives and others who look at the areas of improvement, and I think I’m more on the latter,” he said. “I don’t spend energy or time in my life asking each morning, ‘Are we happy with what we did?’
"Part of my job is to convince everyone we are not world champions after Canada or Monaco, and we are not much worse one week after Canada.
"In Canada we were not in bad shape," he insisted. "What's clear is the car was a bit more difficult to drive the last couple of events, and the level of expectation [after Monaco] was higher.
"My job is more don’t blame everything, to push or try to get them motivated. My job is sometimes more to stay calm on the positive and negative.
"Most important is to be focused on your weaknesses and to keep the continuous improvement approach," he insisted.
"It’s much more about a continuous improvement approach,” Vasseur explained. “We don’t have to do one thing and it’s done. My ‘To-Do’ list is to convince everyone at the factory it’s like this.
“Every single day we have to try and do a better job than yesterday. It’s even more true today in F1, with such small gaps between the teams and the cars.
"Every single detail is making a huge difference in terms of results. The average between us and the guys in front is something like three or four hundredths of a second.
"We have to keep this in mind and make sure we are trying in every area of the company from production to design to track operations to aero to chase every tenth.”
“It’s the life of a team, that you have up and downs," he added. "But we’re not in the situation that we’re trying to put the responsibility on someone.
"We know we are pushing, we know we just need to fix things. We are absolutely not in the situation to finger point.
“It’s a huge challenge," he admitted. “But the mood is there and the mood is important for the final result. We have to keep the positive attitude that we have, and try to do a better job.”
Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter
