Charles Leclerc makes feelings clear as Lewis Hamilton new Ferrari boss revealed….
Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc has made his feelings clear about team principal Frederic Vasseur after his lacklustre debut campaign.
Charles Leclerc has stressed he’ll support Frederic Vasseur as Ferrari’s team principal, even though all eyes will be on the Frenchman following an uninspired 2023 season, alongside the fact that a championship-hungry Lewis Hamilton will soon arrive in 2025.
Finishing a mere three points behind Mercedes in third last season meant Vasseur’s debut campaign with the Scuderia was less than ideal. The pressure to perform is now immense, and the Brit will soon make the switch to Ferrari red, demanding a car and team that can compete.
Vasseur’s position as team principal could be under fire should he disappoint in this upcoming campaign. However, Leclerc has been quick to defend Vasseur, saying: “I’m completely on board with the long-term and mid-term vision that he has for the team. That also gave me the confidence in believing in the project for the future.
“To go into the specifics of exactly how things changed is more difficult because it’s just a different way of working with Fred; there are so many particularities that are different.”
Former team principal Mattia Binotto’s departure from Ferrari after four seasons at the helm came after a string of mistakes undermined what looked initially like a promising 2022 campaign.Leclerc, who raced under Vasseur in 2018 at Sauber, refused to compare the two but was adamant that his current boss doesn’t take notice of such chatter, stating: “Without going into a comparison of the past and now, I think one really good thing about Fred is that he doesn’t really care about the outside talk around the team.
“He’s very much focused on what needs to be done within the team. He’s very straight to the point and I think that is a strength of Fred’s. I really like this way of working.”
the soon-to-be departing carlos sainz’s singapore win was remarkably the only non-red bull victory in 2023, but leclerc believes that optimism is vital for ferrari’s upcoming campaign.
he added: “six months ago, since we started that second part of the season, there was a really big motivation from the whole team. i remember very clearly the moment we ran our particular test in zandvoort in the free practices. we came back from zandvoort, and we all sat down, and we had very clear results in front of our eyes.
That gave a huge motivation to the team because we were like, ‘okay, so now we understand what are the weak points of the car, where we need to work, which direction we need to take’. And from that moment onwards, everybody has been fully on board with the directions that we have been taking. Everything made sense.“After three or four races, we brought a new floor in Japan, and straight away, it was a step forward. In terms of sensitivities with the wind, but also in terms of the front, I speak very often about wanting a strong front and that was a step forward as well.
“I really hope that this car can follow up the momentum that we’ve had since the second part of last year,” he said. “But I don’t think it’s a new optimism right now – I think it already started six months ago – but it’s a good thing to see and it’s exciting for the future.”
