Ferrari boss Frederic Vasseur is adamant that he’s ignoring the points situation in the 2024 Formula 1 season as the side strives to resolve its dip in competitiveness.
The Italian marque started the season as Red Bull’s closest challenger and closed to 24 points behind the champions with a prized win in Monaco in the eighth round.
However, Ferrari has been unable to build upon that momentum and has registered one podium in the last four races as updates have delivered unintended setbacks.
Ferrari’s developments from Barcelona have seen bouncing at high speed reappear and prompted the side to revert to an earlier package at Silverstone last weekend.
With Carlos Sainz coming home a distant fifth and Charles Leclerc unable to score, Ferrari is now looking over its shoulder at McLaren, who is now seven points back.
But Vasseur has underlined that he is unconcerned with the championship standings as his attention is fixated on helping Ferrari to get back competing with its rivals.
Asked whether Ferrari could still entertain thoughts about catching Red Bull, who is now 71 points clear in the lead, Vasseur answered: “Honestly, I’m not focused.
“If you ask me what the classification is, I know that we are P2 because your colleague asked me the same question ten minutes ago.
“But I don’t know about how many points we are behind Red Bull and how many points we are ahead of, I don’t know who is P3, it’s McLaren probably.
“And it’s not the topic of today. The topic of today is to find performance, to come back in the situation of Monaco or Imola or whatever, and to be able to fight for pole position and the win.
“Then, the championship, we have still 12 races to go or 13 races to go. It’s almost a championship. It means that we’ll have time to change everything 10 times.”
Sainz, who used the older specification SF-24 from the outset at Silverstone, suggested the team could be in line to use the updates at the slower-speed Hungaroring.
But Vasseur has tempered that claim and asserted that the Maranello-based squad required time to delve through all the data before coming to a conclusive decision.
“This we will have to have a deep analysis on the weekend, and consider the fact that Silverstone was from far the most aggressive track in terms of bouncing,” he said.
“With very high-speed corners and so on,” he continued. “But we’ll have time to discuss and to decide for Budapest.”
