Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur has said there is no way back to the old days of an ‘iron fist’ approach to running the team, as employed by Jean Todt who ruled Maranello from 1994 to 2007.
That was the era when Michael Schumacher dominated the sport, and Todt was aided in managing the team by a technical dream team consisting of Ross Brawn and Rory Byrne.
Todt’s tenure resulted in Schumacher becoming the first Ferrari driver to win the title since Jody Scheckter in 1979. He eventually went on to win five of his seven championships with the Scuderia before retiring.
Since then it’s been leaner years for Ferrari, with Kimi Raikkonen the last of their drivers to become world champion in 2007 by one point from McLaren duo Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton.
The insistent Italian media spotlight on the team has been unremitting, and every mistake picked over. Many pundits have suggested that the team leader needs to be a stronger and more austere figure, more Maurizio Arrivabene than Mattia Binotto.
But that’s not Vasseur’s way of doing things, as he made clear in a recent interview with Auto Sprint.
- Read also: Vasseur points to ‘too many mistakes’ in Ferrari camp
“Iron fist is not my way, and times have changed,” he said. “People’s psychological approach is different. We need a more inclusive approach that makes everyone participate in a winning project.
“This is true in all contexts, not just in Formula 1,” he added.
He said that in his view, Todt’s great skill as team principal was in surviving those first fallow years before the titles started raining down.
“From 1993 to 2000 Ferrari didn’t win,” he said. “I think it was more difficult for Jean to survive seven years than to win titles over and over again!
“There are no winning recipes by definition. You just have to improve the system and Jean was great at surviving and developing it right.”
Ferrari is often painted as being a difficult and tumultuous environment for both team management and drivers, but Vasseur says that’s not what he’s found at Maranello since taking over from Binotto at the start of the season.
“When the possibility of me coming to Ferrari was being discussed, everyone was telling me, ‘You’ll see what chaos is, what internal struggles are’. That idea is completely false.
“It’s a notion people have developed and got used to repeating,” he told Gazzetta dello Sport. “If I compare Ferrari to other teams, even those where I’ve been, the atmosphere is really good.
“Every morning when I arrive at the office, there’s a group of people eager at the entrance. It’s a great driving force, even though sometimes it doesn’t help when you need time and calmness to grow.”
Calmness is hard to come by when the team has failed to deliver on pre-season expectations that it would be challenging for race wins and even pushing Red Bull for the championship.
“We discuss a lot and today at Ferrari, around a table, we don’t blame each other,” Vasseur responded. “I’m always critical of myself and I push everyone. The worst thing for a team is to become complacent and relaxed.”
The current domination of Max Verstappen and Red Bull has put many people in mind of the Schumacher/Ferrari golden era of the 2000s, which many felt at the time had been detrimental to the sport.
Asked if he felt that way today about Verstappen, Vasseur told Auto Sprint: “Verstappen isn’t hurting anything, he’s just doing a fantastic job – better than the others – with his team.
“I think others collectively have to do a better job,” he added. “We just need to be inspired to do a better job. We can’t complain about the dominance of [Max].”
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