‘Big difference’ at Ferrari with critical area addressed ahead of Hamilton’s arrival

The Ferrari F1 pit wall in Singapore.

Ferrari crew on the pit wall.

Although Ferrari’s F1 2024 championship wasn’t without a bit of radio strife as Carlos Sainz argued strategy, Bernie Collins believes Fred Vasseur has made a “really big difference” in eradicating his predecessor’s culture of blame.

It’s good news for Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc as 2025 is predicted to be Ferrari’s best chance in years at winning a World title.

From playing the blame game to empowering Ferrari’s strategists

Ferrari last knocked on the door of a Drivers’ title in 2022 when Charles Leclerc finished runner-up to Max Verstappen. It was then-team boss Mattia Binotto’s final season in charge but it was one that was blighted by strategy blunders that cost the team in the championship fights.

Ferrari president John Elkann all but accused the Italian of bringing a culture of blame back to Maranello, calling him out as he closed the book on Binotto’s tenure as team boss and welcomed Vasseur into the role.

“If you trace back,” he said. “we haven’t had that culture since Jean Todt and then Stefano [Domenicali, Todt’s successor] were leading. It just left us. Accountability is that you own your responsibility and somehow a blame culture deflects that.

“You need a culture that is able to use that focus in a way that pushes full responsibility and accountability and ultimately a no-blame culture is a prerequisite of it.”

Vasseur not only took steps to instill the right type of leadership but he also made key changes to Ferrari’s technical department with former head of strategy Inaki Rueda back in Maranello while Ravin Jain took over as the Scuderia’s head of strategy.

But while he has resolved many of Ferrari’s issues over the past two seasons, it’s not perfect. Just ask Carlos Sainz.

Several times during his final season with Ferrari he was heard over the radio questioning the team’s strategy with it being put to former strategist turned Sky analyst Collins on the Red Flag podcast that “these guys are idiots”.

Asked that if they have the “tools at Ferrari and then some, how come Carlos Sainz is like, ‘F*ck it, I’m just gonna do everything? How do we get to Vettel being ‘F*ck this!’?

Collins believes it all stems from Ferrari’s strategists, before the Vasseur era, being afraid that they’d lose their jobs if they made the wrong call on the pit wall. Today, she says looking in from the outside, the Frenchman has made huge strides forward in instilling confidence in those making the big decision.

“Well,” she said, “it was a big worry when Vettel came to us [Aston Martin] because he was so outspoken about the strategy.

“But I think part of the problem is in the question you posed. So if there’s only one of you, it’s pretty easy to make a decision. You just make a decision, people get on board with it. It’s done.

“I was very lucky at Force India, or Racing Point, Aston Martin, that when I made a decision, very rarely did the management get involved. You know, hardly ever did anyone in the management team go, ‘Oh, I’m not quite sure about that’.

“So you would make your decision right or wrong, and then you would review it after the race.

“So I never had to check the decision so much like, ‘Oh, I’m thinking of doing this, what do you think?’ And then go ‘I’m think of doing this, what do you think?’

“And I think some teams have been subject to that in the past where there’s this, ‘Oh, I don’t want to put my neck on the line because I don’t want to get fired from Ferrari so I’m going to ask the guy above me and see what he thinks’. And then he’s got to ask the guy above him and see what he said.

“I don’t know because I’m not on that pit wall, but that’s the impression I get, and that’s why it takes too long to make the decision. And the driver just says, ‘Well, I’m going to do this because I’ve not heard from you guys in two minutes’.

“And I think just from observation on the outside listening to some of their radio, I think Fred’s making a really big difference there. I think he’s beginning to build trust in people to make their own decision, stick by it, and then move on.

“So I think we’ve seen over the past two years a strengthening because none of the people on the pit wall in any team are idiots. We’re all intelligent people, so it’s just about empowering them to make the decisions that they think are right, and then learning and keep moving from them.

“But like I said, I don’t have any inside knowledge, it’s just opinion.”