Gary Anderson's verdict on Ferrari's latest F1 crisis

When Ferrari struggles, Italy struggles, and the Italian media will always be circling, ready to put the boot in if the results aren't there.

But the attacks on team principal Fred Vasseur in the build-up to the Canadian Grand Prix might have had more to them than simply needing to fill some column inches.

When I was working full-time in Formula 1, there were a couple of reporters that we all knew you could slyly mention a rumour to and, before you knew it, it had spread around the paddock and was considered gospel. Sometimes, throwing out these rumours was like lighting the blue touch paper as the powers that be latched onto them and thought ‘that’s not such a bad idea’. Before you knew it, things were happening.

It’s good to see that this still happens. However, I have always believed that there is no smoke without fire, so I’m pretty sure internally, all is not well at Ferrari.

The rumours that Vasseur will be replaced are just that. The fact that there continue to be stories about Christian Horner’s future as Red Bull team principal has helped these gain traction, but the question is, why would Ferrari want to make this change?

Yes, performances this year have fallen well short of the expected championship challenge and it has made the commitment to sign Lewis Hamilton on a massively expensive deal, that on face value, seems a waste. But the blame for that can’t all be laid at Vasseur’s feet, as Ferrari chairman John Elkann was key to Hamilton’s appointment. By the same logic, perhaps his head should be on the chopping block too? Obviously, that’s not something that can happen given he’s not a normal employee and is effectively a Ferrari shareholder.

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There is no magic bullet in F1. Personnel changes all take time to settle it and we see it in Premier League football where managers of underachieving teams get replaced regularly. However, looking a little deeper it's the teams that keep their managers through the tough times who usually come out stronger in the long run.

My own experience at Jaguar was an example of how the upper management can internally undermine your authority. It's very difficult to keep everyone focused on the endgame if the big boss is questioning everything you do and also quietly leaking it to there favoured media outlet. Those leaked rumours true or not only grow momentum, and that can very quickly be detrimental to the team's direction.

Things have changed since the late 1990s and early 2000s. Back then, team bosses were actually the people who owned the teams: Eddie Jordan, Frank Williams, Peter Sauber, Ron Dennis and Tom Walkinshaw, to name but a few. They are all gone and have been replaced with corporate, employed team principals.

Back in my day, and rightly so as long as they were given the backing required, it was the technical director who was normally hung out to dry if things didn’t go right.

Today, the team boss seems to have been elevated to more of a ‘know-it-all’ as opposed to a shrewd wheeler-dealer who would focus on strengthening the team as opposed to worrying about the ride height aero map and if it was working in a wide enough window.

This 2025 car concept was put together during the timeframe when technical director Enrico Cardile went on gardening leave and Loic Serra joined from Mercedes, so for that period Vasseur took on more technical oversight. If so, it was just for a few months where he was notionally in charge and well before the 2025 season started when Ferrari should have been up to full strength.

That said, I do know that early on internally he tried to make sure that he did have the necessary authority etc over all the staffing and how the structure of the company would operate. Previously Ferrari had Mattia Binotto as team principal and effectively still technical director, I said when they made those changes that it was the wrong way to go. No one person can do those two jobs. If Ferrari is just letting history repeat itself then it deserves to suffer.

As for the car itself, it obviously has some sort of an aerodynamic platform stability problem. In Monaco where you have to run higher ride heights than normal it was a rocketship. When the performance comes from lower ride heights, as it does at most circuits, it struggles more but in Charles Leclerc's hands it’s just about OK. until Ferrari can come up with a solution that will give it a wider working window.

However in Hamilton’s hands, it can very quickly run into the unknown. He can be right up there in one session and struggle to get in the top 10 or even top 15 in the next. This is what would be expected of a rookie, not someone who has more than 350 starts and seven world championships to his name. The team looks to someone with this experience to give them direction, but on more than one occasion he seems to be at loggerheads with his engineer, Riccardo Adami. That adds to the pressure on Vasseur. That’s what the Italian media latches onto, and so the pressure builds.

The battle with McLaren for the constructors championship last year went down to the wire. Ferrari ended up second 14 points behind McLaren and this year it's currently third, but a massive 191 points behind McLaren. Performance is all relative. This year, McLaren and Mercedes have made progress, Red Bull has stood still, and you could even say it has lost constructors' points because of replacing Sergio Perez and then rotating the second seat.

At best, Ferrari has stood still. You could even argue that it is suffering from replacing Carlos Sainz. He knew the team and how they worked, so might just have been able to grab a few extra points while Hamilton still hasn’t come to terms with his change from Mercedes to Ferrari.

My only criticism of how Vasseur operates is that sometimes blame has to be allocated. That doesn’t necessarily mean hanging people out to dry in public, but it’s important to show your frustration and that he recognises where the problems actually lie. It’s not enough to say F1 is tough, we all know that, and the viewers and enthusiasts are not stupid. If we can put two and two together and come up with four, and Vasseur puts the same two and two together and comes up with five, then he will be questioned.

I don’t know who needs to do it, realistically someone right at the top of the company, but Vasseur needs to be reaffirmed in the position of team principal with the full confidence of the Ferrari leadership.

They then together need to do the same with the other key leadership positions, particularly on the technical side - so technical director, head of aero, chief designer etc and give them the backing and freedom to do their job. That’s what McLaren did under Andrea Stella’s leadership, ensuring everyone can do what they are good at rather than getting bogged down in administration and politics.

Vasseur hasn’t done a bad job. By all accounts, he’s given good, clear guidance to everyone in Ferrari on the priorities and allowed problems to be worked through. That’s reflected in the statistics compared to the previous team bosses who have tried, and failed, to win championships over the past decade and a half.

However, I would like to see him a bit more pissed off with how things have turned out. It’s all about what he says in public, telling the Italian fans in particular that Ferrari is taking the situation seriously.

You don’t need or want a change of leadership because it takes a long time for everyone to settle in, and even in its third season, Vasseur’s Ferrari is still in its early days. But if you are always looking over your shoulder for someone standing there with a knife to plunge between your shoulder blades, then the potential will never be fulfilled.

Success is demanded at Ferrari. The problem is, it’s been too long since it last won a world championship (2008). That will always bring pressure, and Vasseur has done a good job in the way he runs the team. What he needs to pay close attention to is how he manages the situation outside of it.