Ferrari Team Principal Frederic Vasseur says he is not taking inspiration from other Formula 1 teams to make gains at the front of the field. The Italian squad has endured a difficult campaign with title aspirations proving unfounded as the SF-23 machine has struggled with race pace and tyre degradation. Red Bull has won all 14 races staged so far and has been largely unchallenged as it speeds towards back-to-back double championships. Ferrari has only managed four podiums, with Carlos Sainz earning his first of the year in the Italian Grand Prix at Monza after securing pole and leading the first 14 laps of the race before Max Verstappen overtook him.
Vasseur commits to Ferrari way
However, other teams in the field have made sizeable leaps up the order. At the start of the year, Aston Martin catapulted itself into a position to consistently secure podiums, having ended last year’s campaign seventh in the Constructors’ Championship, with Fernando Alonso taking seven podiums thus far. McLaren, meanwhile, successfully engineered a mid-season upgrade that provided a leap in performance as it went from lying deep in the midfield pack to a podium contender. But when asked by media including RacingNews365 if it could close the gap to Red Bull in one winter considering the jump other teams have made, Vasseur said: “Honestly, I think it’s not the question. "Today, the best job is to do the best job that we can. To try to improve on ourselves, to improve on ourselves, to work on ourselves, to fix the weaknesses that we have on the car. "Then we will see the outcome – because I am not in the wind tunnel of [Red Bull boss] Christian [Horner], and I don’t know what they are doing. "It means that we just have to be focused on ourselves and not try always to compare with others – at least during the development [of the car.] "Next year will be another story."
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