Ferrari Formula 1 boss Frederic Vasseur has revealed that “95 per cent of the components” from the team’s car this year are being changed on its challenger for 2024.
The Italian marque’s attempt to mount a challenge for the title the past season was thwarted by an inconsistent 2023 car that could not match Red Bull’s RB19 in race trim.
Although a late-season resurgence saw it score the only non-Red Bull win of the year in Singapore, Ferrari dropped behind Mercedes to third in the Constructors’ Championship.
While Ferrari launched a mid-season concept change towards the downwash solution that Red Bull pioneered, the side was limited by the launch-spec architecture of its SF-23, an evolution of last year’s race-winning F1-75.
Like rivals Mercedes, Vasseur has confirmed that Ferrari’s 2024 creation will be radically different to its predecessor as the team bids to haul back onto level terms with Red Bull.
“I don’t know if revolution is the right word,” Vasseur said via RacingNews365. “We have the same regulations now three years in a row that you can’t change massively. It’s a matter of tenths of a second.
“For sure, we have to do a step on that, we don’t underestimate the step. We are changing 95 per cent of the components, perhaps you can consider that it’s a revolution, I don’t know if it will be.
“The expectation is that we are focused on ourselves, we are doing a good step forward. But in the end, it’s always a matter of comparison, you can improve by 100 steps but if the others are improving by 120 you will look stupid.”
Vasseur, formerly of Renault and Sauber in F1, replaced the outgoing Mattia Binotto at Ferrari last winter but endured a nightmare opening to his maiden season at the helm.
Charles Leclerc retired from third with an engine issue in Bahrain, costing him a front-row start in Saudi Arabia, before both he and Carlos Sainz failed to score at all in Australia.
The Ferrari team boss admits that he was pleasantly surprised by the internal reaction to its stuttering start, adding that it was the complete opposite of what he’d expected.
“Everybody told me that ‘you will see at Ferrari that you start the season very well and then it’s going down’,” Vasseur remarked.
“And trust me, after Jeddah or Melbourne, I said ‘what the f***? If this was the good part of the season, we will be in big trouble’.
“The perception that you have from an external point of view of Ferrari is probably wrong.
“When I was outside, I was always thinking that the team would overreact to every single event.
“But the team was very, very calm after Melbourne. We were cautious of the situation and the weakness of the car.”
Vasseur believes he is now better prepared ahead of his second campaign in charge of the Maranello squad after acknowledging the rush that succeeded his appointment.
“One year ago was quite a challenge because I joined quite late,” he added. “It was a huge wave of things to manage, to understand and to discover in a couple of weeks.
“It was four weeks before the launch and five or six weeks before the Bahrain race [when I joined].
“But now I think it’s a much more comfortable situation. I know almost everybody in the company, the system, I have a better understanding of this. I think I’m doing a good job, a better job than last year, let’s say.
“We need to keep the momentum and I think that even if the last part of the season went pretty well. It’s never enough and we don’t have to stop this.”
