It’s the most difficult task in motorsport: director at Ferrari.
This role carries with it the hopes of the tifosi faithful from all over the world, in fact, from the entire Italian nation. No other team leader is as uptight or scrutinized.
At Ferrari, the ultimate symbol on wheels, the expectation is to win. Everything else is perceived as a failure, for which the team leader is inevitably found guilty and fired.
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The greatest Ferrari team principal of the modern era, undoubtedly Jean Todt, was at the helm from 1993 to 2007 – a golden era for the Marinello team, which won five consecutive titles under Michael Schumacher since 2000 and six consecutive constructors’ titles since 1999. At the time, it was a time of unprecedented dominance in the sport.
The Frenchman, the second non-Italian to headline F1’s iconic logo, took charge of one of Ferrari’s darkest periods and eventually took it to unprecedented heights.
Since his departure, Ferrari has struggled miserably. After winning the drivers’ and constructors’ championship in 2007, Todt’s last season at the helm, Ferrari retained its constructors’ name the following year.
That was the duty of the man Todt had groomed to be his long-term successor, Stefano Domenicali; Todt still had a key advisory role. But since 2008, Ferrari has won neither the constructors’ nor drivers’ crowns.
For a team of their status in the sport, it’s been a scary time. At the time, they produced more team leaders than almost any other team: a merry-go-round of chess and false dawns.
Meanwhile, Red Bull team principal Christian Horner has been at the helm since 2006, and Mercedes’ Toto Wolff since 2013; The stability of the leadership of both teams has brought them success.
Now, however, a marked shift in Ferrari’s strategy for recruiting team principals means the mythical logo is, finally, in a position to fight for a name again.
Here’s why Fred Vasseur may be the one to put an end to Ferrari’s years of suffering.
THE POST-TODT MESSAGE
Todt had a plan in place when he left the team. Throughout 2007, he gave Domenicali more and more control, before handing him the reins for the start of the 2008 campaign. Domenicali, like so many Ferrari bosses before and after, was a Ferrari guy through and through, had been with them for more than a decade and rose through the ranks to become the most productive dog in his F1 team.
But even though he had a car capable of fighting for championships, Domenicali was unable to lead the team to glory. In 2009, they only won one race.
In 2010, Fernando Alonso was one race away from victory, but poor strategic resolution (something the team has become known for) in the four-way finale of the year in Abu Dhabi saw Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel win instead. In 2012, some other sublime Alonso season took them to second place in the constructors’ standings.
In 2014, F1 ushered in a radical new era: the arrival of ambitious new turbo-hybrid engines (or powertrains, as teams were forced to call them) as part of arguably the biggest overhaul of technical regulations in F1 history. The new technical director and winner of 2007, Kimi Raikkonen, returns. They were positive about the new regulations that would return them to the front of the grid.
But Ferrari was terribly behind from the start. After only 3 races, Domenicali resigned, ending 23 years with the company.
He replaced Marco Mattiacci, president and CEO of Ferrari North America, a marketing specialist with no F1 experience.
Once again, Ferrari was hunting internally, but it was still a very difficult choice.
In the months that followed, Ferrari would go from crisis to controversy, week after week. Torn apart by domestic politics, they fired a number of key figures: their veteran engine chief and then Ferrari’s own president, Luca di Montezemolo, who had held the post for two decades.
Soon after, he met his star driver: Alonso, who gave up a £20 million-a-year contract with more than two seasons remaining.
They finished the season winless for the first time in 21 years and in a modest fourth position in the constructors’ championship. But a few weeks later, Mattiacci was fired; in fact, it exiled him completely from Ferrari.
Maurizio Arrivabene took over a day after the end of the season, his third team principal in seven months after Domenicali had been at the helm of the team for seven years.
Within two weeks, Arrivabene had fired the head of engineering and lead designer, with the press officer and tire functionality analyst among the casualties.
It’s one of the worst and most confusing seasons in Ferrari’s long history.
The restructuring and chaos of 2014 resulted in a better 2015, although it’s hard to believe that the situation has gotten worse. Alonso’s replacement, Sebastian Vettel, won three times, Ferrari’s goal that season, but there was still a long way to go. of Mercedes.
Although Arrivabene made some improvements, he once supported a Ferrari guy and not an F1 expert: he had spent most of his career racing for Ferrari’s long-standing sponsor Philip Morris before taking over the Marinello team. .
Although they finished second in 2015, third in 2016 and second in 2017, this can be largely attributed to the technical genius of Mattia Binotto, who transformed Ferrari’s engine from atrocious at the start of the new regulations in 2014 to arguably the most productive in competition. By mid-2016, Binotto had been promoted to the position of the team’s technical director, and in 2017 and 2018 he had made significant strides in the car’s progression, making it a normal competitor.
But Arrivabene is still in charge and Ferrari is still winless.
Arrivabene has made some very important mistakes, as well as going toe-to-toe with star driver Sebastian Vettel in 2018. That year, the direction the team took for their car’s progression was obviously at the start of the season, and by the time they turned the tide it was too late. There were also fundamental strategic errors, in terms of the order of the teams and the tyres.
Once again they finished in the standings.
Arrivabene and technical director Binotto were fighting for control of the team’s direction, and their different perspectives caused tensions at the end of the season. Binotto, highly sought after in the paddock for his paintings when designing the car, was in great demand. Arrivabene called it “fake news” and an attempt to “destabilize” the team. Ferrari acted quickly.
Four seasons after taking over, Arrivabene was sent off and Binotto was promoted for the 2019 season.
LES BUNGLES BINOTTO
Binotto’s first season turned out to be promising: he finished in second place after a first restructuring within the team.
But 2020 has been a crisis in every single worst aspect. Driving the car was a nightmare, suffering from primary reliability issues, and worse, severely lacking in power. Ferrari finished sixth, their worst result since 1980. De somehow, Binotto survived that. and even the loss of Sebastian Vettel, whom Binotto had demoted from the prestige of the undisputed number one driver in 2019 to draw with Charles Leclerc in 2020.
Binotto, the engineer, had played a less prominent role on the technical side of things in 2020, a resolution that failed disastrously.
The Italian’s big dream is to revitalise Ferrari as an Italian force: to completely rebuild and return to its roots, just as Todt had done in the 1990s.
“I tell my guys that it’s more important to be Ferrari than to win,” Binotto said in 2021. “Because winning will be an undeniable consequence. If we are able to be Ferrari and look good, victory will be the consequence. “
In 2021, Ferrari subsidized Binotto, basically because radical new regulations were being implemented in 2022, and they thought Binotto could just throw in a new car and hit the road.
They delivered a better package in 2021 and advanced to third position despite a second consecutive winless season.
But they had staked all their chips on prioritizing their 2022 car.
This meant the team stayed on the sidelines, intentionally opting to forget about the short-term pain of watching Mercedes and Red Bull fight for the title.
Then 2022 came and Binotto replaced the game. They scored a one-two finish in the first two races, a resounding success, before Leclerc won again in Australia. Suddenly, they had a competitive car and their goal of earning some other name at their fingertips.
But things turn out spectacularly.
The team began to look completely amateurish as driver errors added to strategic errors. The car began to suffer persistent reliability problems.
Binotto attempted to help the subjects by protecting his subordinates. If a first mistake was made, he would deny it, downplay it, and simply refuse to blame a team member or department.
At worst, it made him feel like he was under any illusions about Ferrari’s prospects. At the same time, he resigned from his duties, spoke less and less to the media, and expanded the workload of key team members such as track boss Laurent Mekies, who had to balance sponsor and media appearances with his responsibilities at races.
Behind the scenes, it was feared that Binotto would not be able to make brutal appeals to his team’s hierarchy to solve his strategic problems.
Ferrari was knocked out of the race mid-season, while Red Bull were the undisputed champions. Ferrari would keep Mercedes in second position, fairly. But the collapse of their name rivalry and rumors of a strained relationship between Binotto and Leclerc, not to mention poor relations with Ferrari CEO Benedetto Vigna, were enough for Ferrari to fire its longtime man.
After 28 years with the company and four seasons as team boss, Binotto left.
“I leave a company that I love, of which I have been part for 28 years, with the serenity that comes from the conviction that I have done everything imaginable to achieve the goals set,” Binotto said regretfully.
While rivals Red Bull (Christian Horner) and Mercedes (Toto Wolff) were characterised by long-term stability thanks to a team principal who had been at the helm for many years, Ferrari’s mismanagement and instability seemed to continue.
THE NEW MAN IN
Since Todt’s departure, Ferrari had selected team bosses based on their ties to Ferrari, either by hiring them in-house or bringing in bosses from a title sponsor.
But after 2023, Ferrari chief executive Vigna took a different approach. Like Todt, his team’s new principal, Frederic Vasseur, is French, but the similarities go beyond that.
Prior to joining Ferrari, Todt had been a rally driver before becoming Peugeot’s racing director. He guided the progression of the team that would dominate the World Rally Championship and win several Dakar rallies, as well as the 24 Hours. Essentially, he is a proven team leader: an exceptional leader and manager, as well as a car developer.
Similarly, Vasseur has a long history of leadership in motorsport. A graduate in engineering, he founded the ASM team (later called ART) which governed the junior formula series and the breeding ground for many long-term champions.
Among them were Lewis Hamilton, Nico Rosberg and Sebastian Vettel in the 2000s. The list of F1 drivers who have graduated from the ART is so long as to be almost ridiculous: existing drivers include Nico Hulkenberg and Esteban Ocon.
In 2016, Vasseur was called up to the big leagues, taking over as F1 team principal at Renault (that year, coincidentally, Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc raced for Vasseur’s ART). Renault returned as a constructor for the first time since 2011 and performed well finishing 8th in the championship.
But Vasseur’s time at Renault lasted only a year: the team was plunged into political drama, with Vasseur in constant confrontation with Cyril Abiteboul.
Vasseur joined Sauber for a few races in the 2017 season, an F1 locker that last lasted in 2016.
He introduced a bombshell call. The team had just announced that it would close an engine deal with Ferrari and transfer to Honda engines from 2018, but Vasseur forced a U-turn on that deal, cancelling the swap.
Vasseur was not afraid of ambitious tactics, although he had a reputation for turning young drivers into the most sensible talents.
For the 2018 season, Sauber’s ties with Ferrari allowed Vasseur to recruit his academy’s rising star, Charles Leclerc, for his first season.
Leclerc shone in his first year, taking sixth place in Azerbaijan, the team’s result in three years. The team managed to climb to eighth position in the standings until the end of the season.
Vasseur pulled off another driving force move: convincing Ferrari’s former world champion Kimi Raikkonen to sign him for 2019, when the Italian team snapped up Leclerc.
Vasseur’s good fortune has continued over the years at Sauber, which became known as Alfa Romeo since 2019. It would take them to eighth in 2019 and 2020, ninth in 2021 and a remarkable sixth in 2022, their result in a decade.
He had turned a sinking ship around and turned it into a cohesive team despite limited resources, and he had consistently produced cars that made effective use of Ferrari engines.
No Ferrari is interested.
HOW VASSEUR CHANGED FERRARI
He arrived at Marinello after the 2022 season and, like at Sauber, made quick changes.
Shortly after Vasseur’s arrival, Leclerc said: “He arrived with very transparent concepts and includes a team that is very big.
“After a few days, he understood what to do and he did it. That’s positive. “
At the outset, Carlos Sainz said: “Ferrari has led him to take another approach. I am fine. I hope he adopts more and more as he goes along. “
Chief strategist Iñaki Rueda was reassigned to the factory in a completely different role, and Vasseur boldly sold out Green strategist Ravin Jain. Another experienced strategist, Claudio Albertini, was put in charge of the pilot academy, which meant that the number of people on the track was immediately reduced from eight to six.
Laurent Mekies’ day-to-day jobs were completely replaced on the track, having been sidetracked when he took over Binotto’s media duties last year.
Leclerc said: “His task is to put other people in the right positions, and he’s wonderful at that. Unbelievable. “
Leclerc, who came here via ART and drove with Vasseur in his 2018 rookie season at Sauber, evidently has great respect for the team principal.
It’s anything that can result in good luck or failure for a team boss, just as Todt discovered in 1996 at Ferrari, three years after taking over.
The effects hadn’t arrived and Todt was on the ice. Then their new driver, Michael Schumacher, kept Todt’s place and transformed Ferrari’s fortunes for the next decade.
“At first, the scenario was terrible,” Todt told La Stamp. “In 1996, there was a lot of talk about my dismissal. Michael had just arrived and saw that my plan was good, the other people who were about to arrive and who to deal with secretly matched our plan.
“That’s why he stepped in and said, ‘If Todt dies, so will I. ‘”
Vasseur has not faced this crisis point, however, his strong relationships with the drivers have been very important to the expansion of the team under his leadership.
Still, his first season in 2023 will be tricky, largely because the car’s progression was complete before his arrival.
This Ferrari was quick in qualifying, but problems with the tyres and corners saw it overtaken by Red Bull’s unstoppable RB19.
Red Bull won every race in a winning season, but that race, in Singapore, was a Ferrari victory.
Ferrari slipped to third but made significant gains in the season, missing out on second in the constructors’ championship by just three points ahead of Mercedes.
Behind the scenes, Vasseur managed to gain something of importance in the team. At Ferrari, famous for its political machinations and influence from above, this was no small feat, and the lack of that had led to the ruin of many former team principals at Marinello.
F1’s heavyweight is giant and bulky, a tanker truck that requires a lot of time to manoeuvre. But, slowly and surely, Ferrari is adapting an efficient operation, guided by the hand of its team boss.
And when they produced the 2024 car, it was clear from the start that Vasseur’s influence had paid off.
Ferrari stood on the podium in the first two races, before achieving a one-two finish in Australia.
McLaren’s Lando Norris said: “You’ll probably see that the most impressive thing was Ferrari because of the way they were able to make a big step, I would say. Probably one of the biggest milestones from last year to this year. “
Meanwhile, Vasseur has been ambitious in the driver market and landed Mercedes’ mythical star, Lewis Hamilton, by 2025.
But they don’t focus on it yet, because for the first time in years Ferrari is doing well and is actually back in the running for the name.