Vasseur stands firm on Ferrari claim as new appointments teased

Frederic Vasseur is defiant that the underlying concept of Ferrari's F1 car remains "good" despite a slump in performance.

Ferrari started the season strongly, picking up wins in Australia and Monaco as the team sat second behind Red Bull after the victory in Monte Carlo for Charles Leclerc.

However, in the seven races since, it has slipped back as McLaren has leap-frogged it into second place and taken the challenge to Red Bull, with the SF-24 struggling after a failed upgrade at the Spanish GP.

Since then, the team has been trying to work through and understand the problems brought about by the upgrade, with a breakthrough being made in recent races with Leclerc on pole in Belgium and taking two podiums at Spa and Zandvoort - the latter a surprise for the Monégasque.

Reflecting on where Ferrari finds itself, boss Vasseur is confident that the underlying concept of the car remains strong. 

"It is always a combination, but we were not very confident coming to Zandvoort," Vasseur told media including RacingNews365.

"We didn't do FP1 and in FP2, we only had one car [after a gearbox issue for Sainz], and we were a bit lost and for Charles not to have a reference was not good. 

"We arrived in qualifying and it was not magic, but in quali, if you look on the scrubbed sets in Q3, we had a good pace - not enough to fight with [pole-sitter] Lando [Norris], but we were in better shape than the final result [showed].

"I think it is a matter of details, I'm not worried for this. The [car] concept is good."

Signings coming

Ahead of the summer break, it was announced that long-time Ferrari technical chief Enrico Cardile would be leaving to join Aston Martin, with Vasseur temporarily taking over Cardile's duties. 

Coming into its home grand prix at Monza, Vasseur indicated fresh signings were imminent. 

"We will do the announcement after Monza [with the structure of the team] being the announcement," he teased.