A wave of reports in some of Italy’s biggest media outlets have criticised various aspects of Fred Vasseur’s Ferrari leadership ahead of Formula 1’s Canadian Grand Prix.
The prospect of Ferrari splitting with Vasseur at the end of this year, the end of his original three-year contract since he was recruited to replace Mattia Binotto, has been raised at the same time by several Italian publications including big-hitters Gazzetta della Sport and Corriere della Sera.
Ferrari has scored back-to-back podiums in the last two F1 races with Charles Leclerc and moved into second in the constructors’ championship after the previous grand prix in Spain, but it has not fought for victory in any of the nine grands prix so far.
New signing Lewis Hamilton did score pole and win the sprint race in China, but its second place in the teams’ standings is at odds with Hamilton and Leclerc being fifth and sixth in the drivers’ championship - well adrift of the two McLaren drivers at the top.
And ahead of the Canadian Grand Prix, Italian media have cranked up the heat on Vasseur.
WHAT'S BEEN SAID
Gazzetta dello Sport reported that the next three races in Canada, Austria and Britain will be key to how much pressure Vasseur comes under internally, and that if Ferrari goes on to perform in the second half of the year as it has so far in 2025, he could be replaced.
Corriere della Sera went even further, calling several aspects of Vasseur’s tenure into question with the strongest and most specific criticism.
It reported that there are various open fronts within Ferrari, that Vasseur’s been asked to account for unsatisfactory performance, and that he is accused of not knowing much about the internal environment.
The latter could be related to a Gazzetta claim that Vassuer “shows off smiles and optimism in front of an evident technical gap compared to the rivals” and also has a “tendency to postpone the acceptance of difficulties”.
Corriere della Sera has suggested that Hamilton’s underwhelming start - in which the seven-time world champion has been extremely downbeat at times, especially recently - raises “a whole series of questions” about his hiring, which Vasseur was a key part of but chairman John Elkann really drove.
It also claimed that even Charles Leclerc, Vasseur’s most vocal supporter who signed a new long-term deal with Ferrari at the end of Vasseur’s first year in charge, has started to have serious doubts.
It referred to Leclerc’s “closest circle” letting slip doubts about his deal that runs to 2029, which was reiterated by Corriere dello Sport in a piece about Ferrari becoming increasingly chaotic.
WHERE’S THIS COMING FROM?
Ferrari told The Race on Thursday the story is so nonsense that “it’s not even worth commenting on”, and Vasseur has not yet responded as he has been travelling to Canada from a quick visit to the Le Mans 24 Hours, where Ferrari is competing for top class honours.
When Hamilton was asked about it in the FIA press conference in Montreal, though, he said he was unaware of any intention to replace Vasseur and that was something he would not support.
“Embedding new people, new personnel - whether it’s a driver or engineers or the people who run an organisation - it takes time to adjust, and the impact that has is significant,” said Hamilton.
“So that’s not part of the discussion. I’m here to win with Fred. And he has my full support.”
Hamilton called the reports “nonsense”, and used it to also dismiss speculation he has been made aware of about his own future too.
Also in Montreal, Leclerc batted off any rumours he was considering his future at Ferrari.
"I'm very surprised," he said in reaction to the reports in Italian media.
"I have no idea where it's coming from. I'd rather just ignore it, but I've never said anything of this, in the last few races.
"If anything, I keep saying how much I love the team and how much I want to bring back Ferrari to the top, so, yeah, I was just surprised."
Scrutiny of Ferrari is unlike anything any other team faces with its national media, but when it escalates to apparently coordinated criticism, as it has this week, that indicates something more than just coincidental sentiment from individual journalists or outlets.
The publication of these articles by such major Italian publications at the same time indicates a shift inside Ferrari at Vasseur’s expense with either members of the team speaking out about Vasseur or even upper management - CEO Benedetto Vigna or Elkann - briefing against him or simply not defending him rigidly like before and therefore leaving him open to intense criticism.
This is not uncommon where the Italian team is concerned. In late 2022, Italian media reported that Vasseur’s predecessor Binotto was poised to be replaced, which reflected a shift in position from the hierarchy - and though Ferrari briefly adopted a public position that the speculation was false, in a matter of weeks Binotto was indeed ousted and Vasseur replaced him.
A POSSIBLE REPLACEMENT NAMED
Corriere della Sera has gone as far as linking Ferrari’s endurance racing boss Antonello Coletta (below, left) with the job if Vasseur is replaced. And The Race has been told by sources that one option could be for chief racing revenue officer Lorenzo Giorgetti to take on a more specific F1 role in combination with Coletta.
Coletta’s World Endurance Championship team won the 2024 Le Mans 24 Hours and is currently leading the 2025 championship after three wins in the first three races. If more Le Mans success follows this weekend or indeed the WEC title that is a huge target as Ferrari has never won the top class in its current iteration, at a time the F1 team is struggling and there are doubts about its 2026 engine progress, it would be an easy swap to justify on paper.
Corriere claims that Coletta has been approached previously about the job and declined it, which some suggest Ferrari would not accept a second time, so he and Red Bull team principal Christian Horner are “at the top of the list” of Vasseur alternatives.
However, Horner is understood to not be an option. Elkann travelled to Horner’s home in 2022 after identifying him as a preferred successor to Binotto, but Horner said no - and recommended Vasseur, although then-McLaren boss Andreas Seidl was approached before Vasseur.
Now, Horner remains committed to Red Bull and seeing through its switch to being a fully-fledged works team with its own engine next year, a programme Horner has been central in putting together.
Should Ferrari eventually be moved to issue any comment, it would likely be to put distance between the reports and the feeling in the team, or to provide a vote of confidence in Vasseur from upper management.
This would need to be taken with caution, though, given what happened with Binotto.
'THE SAME STORY AS ALWAYS'
Vasseur has often stressed the need for Ferrari not to get pulled into drastic ups and downs - celebrating like heroes when successful, or viewing it as a disaster when a weekend goes poorly - and at times that has been a necessary and welcome relief from Ferrari’s previous tendency to overreact.
However, it has also conveyed a feeling that the extent of Ferrari’s deficit is either not fully understood or taken seriously enough, at least publicly. And this has been latched onto with the criticism that has emerged in Italy.
Quite often the Ferrari team boss becomes a scapegoat and as its title drought looks almost certain to extend to 17 seasons - Vasseur being the fifth team principal in that time - there are clearly deeper problems making F1’s biggest team weaker than the sum of its parts.
Maybe that is why even ex-driver Carlos Sainz, who would have more reason to criticise Vasseur given he was dumped to make room for Hamilton, was so surprised that Vasseur's position is in any way under question.
Sainz has previously questioned Ferrari’s technical direction and felt his own feedback was overlooked by that part of the team, and suggested that Vasseur is wrongly under pressure now.
“The same story as always – the moment the results don't click in Ferrari, there's always finger pointing by the [Italian] media and all this chaos happening, when for me it’s all about focusing on the process and delivering when it matters,” said Sainz when asked by The Race about the speculation that emerged.
“If you ask me, Fred, I have a great relationship with him in the past. Obviously, we went through a tough month where he didn't want me and signed Lewis!
“But apart from that, we made peace about it, and I get on well, and I always rated him as a team principal and as a person.”
A KEY 2025 MOMENT COMING
Ferrari’s season has been a step back from how last year ended, and included the particularly embarrassing low of a double disqualification in the Chinese Grand Prix, 24 hours after Hamilton won the sprint.
Its car development choices for 2025 have created fundamental weaknesses limiting the potential of the package, and the direction was committed to before new technical boss Loic Serra - a key Vasseur recruit - could have influence on the design.
He only started last October and Vasseur has often spoken of the massively long lead times for recruiting and people then having an impact.
A rear suspension tweak that is expected to arrive before the summer break could be key to how the second half of Ferrari’s season develops, and be Serra’s first major impact on its 2025 car.
His arrival is fascinating given Ferrari has repeatedly hit issues in the ground-effect era with problematic car characteristics and has encountered yet more difficulty this year.
New technical leadership could potentially be key to long-term progress if Vasseur has correctly identified a limitation, and an explanation for why Ferrari keeps making cars that Leclerc can occasionally make work in spectacular ways but that are also inherently limited.
