Ahead of the Canadian Grand Prix, it appeared pressure was starting to build on Fred Vasseur. It came as a surprise, given the general strides that had been made since he joined in 2023, coming so close to winning the constructors’ championship last year and looking well-set to challenge McLaren this season.
But what wasn’t surprising was the disappointment in Ferrari’s 2025 performance, slipping a long way adrift of McLaren and yet to win a race, albeit having still regained second spot in the standings again.
One of the Italian reports claimed the next three race weekends would be crucial to Vasseur’s future, and yet despite just one podium in that run, we arrived in Budapest to the news of a contract extension for the Ferrari team principal.
Whether the timing was simply due to the expiration of his previous deal or not, the commitment is a symbol of Ferrari’s faith in Vasseur, that he is still leading the team in the right direction. And on Thursday, two of the key personnel he needs to have the support of – his drivers – agreed.
“I’m really, really happy,” Charles Leclerc said. “I mean, it’s not that it’s coming as a surprise, but especially in the past month there were quite a few rumors, like is always the case around the team, so to finally have the official news out is important and I’m really happy.”
“I only heard yesterday about it,” said Lewis Hamilton. “And you’ve heard my positive comments about Fred – I’ve told everyone that. I told you before that it was the right choice. Fred signed me here and we want to work together.”
An accusation that is often leveled at Ferrari is that the team comes under more intense scrutiny than others when it isn’t winning, leading to knee-jerk reactions, with the emotion involved described as “quite intense” by Leclerc. But Hamilton sees positives on that front in terms of the desire to succeed that exists within the team, and he believes Vasseur has a similar trait to his former boss Toto Wolff in how to harness that.
“It’s just trying to understand the environment that you’re in,” Hamilton said. “You have to adapt, and I think the people you work with ultimately will learn to adapt to cater to you. I think this year the response has been amazing to the steps that we’ve taken in all areas. And the passion and the desire to continue to do better is what’s the most amazing thing, I think, in this team.
“Just everyone just wants to do better and find ways of being better, and that’s why I know this team has absolutely every ingredient that’s needed to succeed. I truly believe in that – that’s why I signed.
“All I can say from my previous experience is I remember the real positive when I was working with Toto, just how he was able to utilize individuals – figure out how people work best, how to get the most out of someone. So, for example, with me, he created freedom for me to be able to express myself the way I wanted to, and that enabled me to be the best version of myself,
“That’s what he would do there. And I think Fred is very similar in that respect. I’m still trying to learn the way that Fred likes to work, but I have absolute confidence in Fred, as I’ve always said.”
The intensity of its fans is part of the Ferrari allure, but also creates unique pressure when the team’s results fall short of expectations. Lars Baron/Getty Images
While Hamilton is new to Ferrari and cites Vasseur as one of the major reasons he joined, Leclerc has seen the Scuderia operating under both Mattia Binotto and Vasseur. Having referenced the speculation over Vasseur’s future in the past months, Leclerc says one of the strengths of his current boss is to be able to rise above external distractions to focus on overall progress.
“Without going into comparing the different eras, I think Fred has an incredible vision and I think what’s very difficult within Ferrari is the emotion is very much part of the daily job,” he said. “Because Italian people in general – and that’s what makes Ferrari so special – are extremely passionate about Ferrari. But Fred really knows how to leave his emotions aside and have a clear vision of where we are at, no matter how much noise there is around the team and this is very, very important.
“Apart from that, he’s got obviously many more qualities. One of them is also to extract the maximum out of every single person at the factory and this, when you put everything together, makes a big difference.”
According to Leclerc, the ability to cut out the noise is something that Vasseur is not only good at himself, but a trait he has been passing on to the Ferrari team to help it avoid falling into negative spirals as it has at times in the past.
“He definitely changed the way we are working on different things,” Leclerc said. “But again, I think where Fred made the biggest difference is [with] his overall vision. And this, he definitely embedded to the team and that’s very, very important.
“As I said, I feel like the beauty of Ferrari is the fact that emotionally speaking, it’s always quite intense, but it can also harm us in some ways and especially when tougher times arrive. Fred has always had very cold blood in those moments and helped the team to just be a little bit more lucid. That’s probably the biggest thing that Fred brought to the team.”
So why was his future ever called into question in Italian media? For Leclerc, it stems from the expectations coming into 2025, and the huge interest that came with both Hamilton’s arrival and the form that Ferrari ended last season in.
“I think the fact that there was so much hype around the team at the moment when we then started the season, I think everybody thought about us going to win the championship,” Leclerc said. “And unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.
“Then there were some rumors around and that took a bigger proportion than what we would have wanted. But these are not things that we can control and I think it’s part of Ferrari. It’s always been the case and it will never change. So we cannot really focus on that. I think the best thing we can do is to try and not think about those things as much as possible.”
That’s very much a mantra that Vasseur preaches, and is set to get to continue working to for a number of years moving forward.
