Vasseur disregards current championship standings despite Ferrari's impressive form
Despite having taken an emotional victory on home turf, Ferrari should not think of the championship standings, claims the Scuderia's team boss Fred Vasseur.
Before the Italian Grand Prix, Ferrari introduced two comprehensive set of upgrades, having brought heavily-modified parts to Imola and Barcelona. The Scuderia had been expected to introduce its last big upgrade package either in Baku or Singapore, but it managed to push the new kit forward to its second home race of the season.
The upgrade package centred around a new floor, with a reshaped central flat-floor ‘canoe’ section, and appropriate changes to the angles of the floor fences at the tunnel inlets, new floor edge detail, a revised expansion ramp to the diffuser and a greater coke bottle cutout.
Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur insists that teams have to take bigger risks now that the current regulations have been in place since the start of the 2022 season.
"More seriously, consistency was not the issue on the long stint. I think we did a huge step forward compared to 12 months ago on this. For sure, we are all looking after consistency from session to session or from event to event.
"But we are also in the situation that we are developing this car now for three years or four years. It's becoming more and more difficult to bring performance to the car and we have to take a bit more risk on this and sometimes it's paying off, sometimes a bit less."
Ferrari is third in the teams' standings, and after the Italian Grand Prix that saw the Scuderia take a one-four result and Red Bull finish in the lower reaches of point-scoring zone, the Italian outfit is cut down the deficit to the Milton Keynes-based to just 39 points.
Despite the shrinking deficit, Vasseur does not think of the championship standings, and urges his team to approach every weekend in an aggressive manner.
"I didn't pay attention to the championship, and I won't pay attention to the championship. I think we just have to do a good job to do the best every single weekend, and if something has to come, it will come.
"But the worst, I think, would be to be focused on the championship, to be conservative, to do this kind of approach, because on the same weekend, for details, you can move from P1-2 to 7-8, for strategy, for tyre management, for whatever the reasons. And this can change massively from one weekend to another one.
"A good weekend, it's 43 points. Soon we'll have weekends with the Sprint race. It means that you can score 55 points a weekend. I think we have still something like 500 points on the table," concluded Vasseur.
