Vasseur details 'mindset' needed for Hamilton to improve at Ferrari
Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur says Lewis Hamilton's improvement requires a collective "mindset" to fix many small performance deficits, not one magic bullet. After a podium-less first season, the focus is on better collaboration to help the seven-time champion extract more from the car.
Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur has outlined the collective effort required from both the team and Lewis Hamilton to unlock the seven-time champion's performance in 2025. After a challenging first season with the Scuderia marked by a lack of podiums and a pace deficit to teammate Charles Leclerc, Vasseur emphasized that improvement must come from addressing numerous small details rather than finding a single, magical solution.
Why it matters:
Hamilton's struggle to adapt and extract maximum performance from the Ferrari SF-24 represents a significant hurdle for the team's championship ambitions. As one of the sport's most successful drivers faces his most difficult season, the collaboration's success or failure is a critical variable in Ferrari's bid to consistently challenge Red Bull and McLaren at the front of the grid.
The details:
Vasseur dismissed the idea that a single component or issue is responsible for Hamilton's performance gap, which he estimated often amounted to a few tenths of a second per lap.
- He pointed to the cumulative effect of being marginally slower across multiple areas, citing an example like Hamilton's adjustment to a new brake supplier after two decades with Mercedes.
- The philosophy is to methodically tackle each of these small deficits, which might be worth only a few hundredths of a second individually, to close the overall gap.
- Vasseur stressed the mindset must be one of universal improvement, involving the driver, the engineering collaboration, and the team's operations, rather than isolating one problem area.
What's next:
The focus for the winter is on refining the symbiosis between Hamilton and the team. With the internal benchmark set by the consistently fast Charles Leclerc, the pressure is on to ensure Hamilton enters 2025 with a car he can fully exploit. Vasseur's comments frame the challenge not as a quick fix but as a detailed, iterative process essential for Ferrari to field two competitive cars capable of fighting for wins.