Leclerc praises Vasseur's impact on Ferrari culture

Charles Leclerc has been giving details about the impact Frederic Vasseur has had on Ferrari since taking over as team principal at Maranello at the start of 2023.

Vasseur took over the reins from Mattia Binotto, who despite driving the team to make considerable advances as team boss ended up quitting after a number of mistakes led to Ferrari failing to challenge for the 2022 title as expected.

In contrast, Vasseur has made it clear that he's not interested in pointing the finger or finding someone to take the blame when things go wrong.

"When you have an aggressive attitude, sometimes you get less. It’s where we have to stay calm," Vasseur told the official Formula1.com website this week. "We are trying to change a bit the mentality.

"My job is sometimes more to stay calm on the positive and negative," he added. "Most important is to be focused on your weaknesses and to keep the continuous improvement approach."

• Read also: Vasseur determined to stay on top and keep calm at Ferrari

"If you start to be convinced that what you are doing is good, it's the beginning of the end," Vasseur had previously said earlier in the year, not long after Carlos Sainz took an unexpected Grand Prix victory in Australia.

Charles Leclerc subsequently achieved a lifelong dream of becoming the first native-born Monaco driver to win his home GP in the modern Formula 1 era. He is very much in favour of this new way to get the best out of everyone working at Maranello.

"People have more responsibilities, are put in a better place to be at their 100 per cent," the Monegasque driver told Motorsport.come in an exclusive interview published this week.

"Fred has always been super good at putting the people in the best possible condition in order for them to perform at their best," he continued. "They really have the trust from Fred, which is a really good thing.

"This is really where it changed, and it's a change of approach," he added, explaining that the intense scrutiny that Ferrari gets from the Italian press and fans had historically been a big problem for the Scuderia.

"Whenever something happens at Ferrari, it always creates more of a mess than in any other teams," he said. "And this is where we need to be good.

"Whenever we are in those moments, we just focus on ourselves, try to take the noise away, learn from it and use it positively. But I hope that we don't have too many of them."

After a grace period, it seems that the Italian press is once again getting restive, with negative headlines about Ferrari's technical director Enrico Cardile leaving to join Aston Martin leaving Vasseur taking over temporarily.

Not that Leclerc is among those voicing any doubts about the way Vasseur handled the situation. "On that particular subject, I always had 200 per cent confidence and trust in what Fred does," he said.

"Obviously Enrico left the team," he continued. "Fred won't stay technical director for a very very long time, and in the meantime I fully trust Fred to manage the situation in the best possible way.

"I'm fully confident it won't affect the team at the end. It's more about the group than one particular person, and of course it's a situation that we need to fix as soon as possible - but Fred is on it."

The press has also been stirred up by the team's recent slump since its jubilant success in Monaco in May. A new floor upgrade rolled out for the following race didn't deliver the expected boost, allowing McLaren and Mercedes to catch up.

Leclerc said that the way Ferrari had faced down and responded to the setback showed just how far the team had come under Vasseur's leadership compared to the old days, where they might have gone into denial and adopted a bunker mentality.

"It took us three or four races, but everyone acknowledged what were the weaknesses of what we had brought on the car," Leclerc explained of coping with the consequences of the misfiring upgrade introduced at the Spanish GP.

"We've done big, big progress in the last seven to eight months before Barcelona, Barcelona has been a one-off," he insisted. "We've been honest with ourselves and understood what we did wrong.

"I'm confident that we'll come back on a good slope," he insisted, adding that this ability to look at problems and cope with them was enhanced under Vasseur. "Maybe in the past it wasn't as easy, so I think we're in a better place."

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