"They are two, three tenths ahead": Vasseur freezes Ferrari fans, who is the enemy to beat

The desire to win is strong, to break a world fast that has lasted since 2007 in the Drivers' Championship and since 2008 in the Constructors' Championship. In the meantime, like every year, the motto "Ferrari, it's the good year" has started, thanks to an enthusiasm that exploded after Hamilton's arrival. The truth, however, is that McLaren remains the team to beat, even if the duel between the two teams last year went all the way to the last GP in Abu Dhabi. And rightly so, Frédéric Vasseur wanted to play the fireman, throwing cold water on the spirits of fans still heated after seeing Lewis' first laps at Fiorano. Draveil's team boss said it in an interview with his French compatriots at Auto Hebdo, placing the title of favorite in the hands of McLaren: "Whoever says we are the favorite forgets our rivals - he said - are ahead of us. In the last year of this technical and regulatory cycle, finding gains on the track is increasingly difficult. It is true that we scored more points in the last eight races of 2024 than them, but they had a performance advantage that they were unable to fully exploit due to some episodes or small inconveniences or problems.

We need to improve by 2-3 tenths more than McLaren will improve, if we succeed nothing will be precluded to us". In short, it will be difficult to recover a car, the one from Woking, which last year proved to be complete and competitive on all tracks, even more so if the single-seaters have now reached the end of a regulatory cycle, introduced in 2022 with the arrival of ground effect cars, and with a level of top performance almost reached. As Vasseur had already said in the presentation conference of the SF-25, the intention is to imitate McLaren and develop the car after four or five GPs, trying to find every possible tenth with the updates.

Also considering a FIA technical directive on wing flexibility that will come into force starting from the Spanish GP in Barcelona, ​​in June. If the innovations don't work, then it's better to focus on 2026, the year of the engine regulation change. "It will be difficult to find significant performance increases during the year, compared to the first races of the season - concludes the team principal - sooner or later we will all have to think about 2026. I certainly don't expect to be able to drastically improve the performance of our car like last year".