Ferrari boss Fred Vasseur has slammed what he has labelled “f****** bulls**t” claims about Lewis Hamilton‘s tough start to the 2025 Formula 1 season with the team.
Hamilton endured a harrowing outing at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix as he trailed home in seventh place, over 30 seconds behind team-mate Charles Leclerc in third.
The Briton was downbeat as he contended that he is braced to experience a “painful” debut campaign with Ferrari as he has “doesn’t have an answer” to his struggles.
Hamilton has been unable to provide a match to Leclerc’s pace in the Italian marque’s troubled SF-25 car since bagging a breakthrough win in the Sprint race in China.
However, Vasseur denied that he is concerned about Hamilton’s results as he insisted the onus is on Ferrari to hand him the tools to replicate his exploits in Shanghai.
“I will be 2000 per cent behind him,” Vasseur said.
“I will give him support and we will start from tomorrow morning to try to find solutions and reasons and to work on it early in the morning.
“But honestly, I am not too worried.
“If you have a look on what he did in China or what he did in the race in Bahrain last week or even on the first part of the session in this weekend, the potential is there for sure.
“We just have to adjust the balance because we are, collectively, Lewis and us, we are struggling with the balance of his car and [how] he is working the tyres.
“It’s a kind of negative spot but I think the potential of the car is there and we will try to solve that.”
When asked how Hamilton’s form had regressed so “dramatically” in recent rounds, the Frenchman retorted: “It’s not dramatically.
“We did five races so far. I know that you want to have the big headlines tomorrow that ‘Fred said this’.
“But this is f****** bulls**t. At the end of the day, we are in competition. You have ups and downs.
“When we have up, we are not world champions. When we have down, we are not nowhere. It’s just a competition.”
Hamilton being held to different standards
Vassuer highlighted that the same criticism wasn’t targeted towards Max Verstappen when he laboured to sixth in Bahrain with an underperforming Red Bull package.
“I’m not sure that you draw the same conclusion with Max last week when he was seventh [sic],” he argued. “It is like it is. The competition is tight.
“You have 10 cars and a couple of tenths.
“Have a look at Max. He won in Japan. He finished 30 seconds behind [Oscar] Piastri in Bahrain, and in Saudi Arabia he was P2 and had pole position.
“We just have to stay calm. You can do whatever you want. I don’t want to worry for you. At least for us as a team, we have to work step by step.
“I think it paid off last year to do hundredths of seconds and hundredths of seconds and we need to keep the same approach.
“I will never be the guy who says we are World Champions or we are nowhere.
“We are a team. We are struggling on the weekend. We have good results on the weekend. It’s just that we have to improve step by step and stay calm.”
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