Fred Vasseur: the man tasked with reviving Ferrari

He joined ESTACA (École Supérieure des Techniques Aéronautiques et de Construction Automobile) in Paris and, while studying, started his first racing team. Vasseur has described the team as a “joke”, but it started winning and attracted the attention of Renault. As a result the young engineer set up his first company, RPM, in 1992 to prepare Formula 3 engines for the firm.

Three years later, Vasseur graduated in Aeronautical Engineering and, after an internship, joined the ASM (Action Sport and Motor) team, which was running Formula 3 cars. He quickly became a key member of the team and bought a stake in the team.

But Vasseur’s ambitions exceeded the plans of the team founder, and he soon bought the company, renaming it ASM F3 and going on to lead it to its first French F3 title in 1998 with David Saelens at the wheel.

Success brought a partnership with Mercedes, and expansion into Euro Formula 3, where ASM continued winning and became a magnet for young talent. Jamie Green (2004), Lewis Hamilton (2005), Paul Di Resta (2006), Romain Grosjean (2007) all won in successive years with ASM, but Vasseur had his eyes on greater heights.

In 2005, he set up ART Grand Prix with Jean Todt’s son, Nicolas, to compete in the then-new GP2 series — the predecessor to current Formula 2 — and took the new championship by storm. In the opening season, ART ran Nico Rosberg, who won the title. He was followed by Hamilton (fresh from success with ASM in F3), who was champion in 2006. Nico Hülkenberg won a third GP2 title for ART in 2009.

By then, ASM and ART had merged, with Vasseur at the helm. He still, however, found time to set up AOTech in 2010, a company which specialises in driving simulators and CFD design. Then came Spark Racing Technology in 2012, which designs and manufactures hybrid and electric systems. It has held the contract to build Formula E chassis since the series first started in 2014.

At this point, Vasseur was unsurprisingly being courted by Formula 1 teams. Initially he resisted the move, later telling The Times that he “enjoyed” working in the junior series as it allowed him to “cover everything as a team principal”.

But the lure of the world championship soon proved too hard to resist.

The Renault and Sauber years 

Vasseur arrived in the F1 paddock at the start of the 2016 season as racing director for Renault, which was making its return to the series as a works team for the first time since 2011.

His role was effectively that of a team principal, and he was handed that title in July of 2016, as part of a restructure which hinted at the problems to come, which would hamper Renault’s attempts to once more be in contention for the world championship.

With a young driver pairing of Kevin Magnussen and Jolyon Palmer behind the wheel, Vasseur’s team managed to finish a respectable ninth in the constructors’ standings — having scored points finishes in Russia, Singapore and Malaysia.

But in January 2017, 11 months after he was hired, Vasseur chose to leave by mutual consent after “differences of opinion” with president Jerome Stoll and managing director Cyril Abiteboul.

“There was too much different vision in the management of the team,” said Vasseur. “If you want to perform in F1, you need to have one leader in the team and one single way. If you have two different visions then the result is that the work inside the team is slow.”

“It is a small frustration, but I have a positive feeling that together we did a good job on some points: in terms of recruitment, in terms of restructuring the company and also in track operations.

“The target was to be in the top five [in 2017]. That is realistic because the foundations are strong now.”

Vasseur’s prediction ultimately came to pass, as his “strong foundations” saw Renault leap up to sixth in the constructors’ standings. Meanwhile, his diagnosis of division at the top of the team would be a factor that dogged his successors.

The Frenchman found more stability six months later, in July 2017, with news that he had been appointed Sauber team principal, as well as managing director and CEO of the Sauber Group — roles which would allow him to execute his own vision in how an F1 outfit should be run.

Results were initially slow, as the team scored just five points and finished at the bottom of the constructors’ standings in 2017. But the arrival of Charles Leclerc — who won a GP3 title with ART in 2016 — soon turned Sauber into a serious midfield threat.

“I’ve been following Charles since his karting days,” Vasseur told Canal+. “After a period at ART, he made his F1 debut with Sauber, so we’ve always been close.

“It’s an advantage for me, because I know him well, and it’s an advantage for him too, because he knows me well.”

Leclerc scored 39 of Sauber’s 48 F1 points in 2018 and earned a promotion to Ferrari for the following year, while Sauber finished eighth in the constructors’ standings — 45 points behind fifth-placed Haas.

From 2019 to 2022, the team was rebranded as Alfa Romeo and Vasseur remained at the helm — guiding the comparatively underfunded Hinwil outfit through three sub-par seasons. Then came the call from Maranello.

Moving to Ferrari 

After Ferrari fumbled the chance to contend for the 2022 F1 world championship — mainly due to poor reliability and a litany of strategy errors — Vasseur was called in to replace the departing Mattia Binotto as team principal and general manager.

He began working in Maranello on January 9, 2023 with a sole goal in mind: returning F1’s most decorated and famed constructor back to the top of the motor’s top echelon.

“We are delighted to welcome Fred Vasseur to Ferrari as our team principal,” said Ferrari CEO Benedetto Vigna. “Throughout his career he has successfully combined his technical strengths as a trained engineer with a consistent ability to bring out the best in his drivers and teams. This approach and his leadership are what we need to push Ferrari forward with renewed energy.”

Vasseur’s first season with Ferrari in 2023 was mostly overshadowed by the dominance of Red Bull and Max Verstappen — a combination with won all but three races across the season. But a victory for Carlos Sainz in Singapore, eight podiums and a third-place finish in the constructors’ standings was enough to convince most that the Frenchman had put the Scuderia back on the right track.

Lewis Hamilton was amongst the most impressed by Vasseur’s influence at Ferrari — which admittedly played a major part in his decision to leave Mercedes and head to Maranello for 2025.

“I’ve got a great relationship with Fred,” said the seven-time world champion. “Obviously I raced with him in F2 and we had amazing success in F3, and also in GP2. That’s really where the foundation of our relationship started. We always remained in touch.

“I thought that he was going to be an amazing team manager at some stage and progress to F1, but at the time, he wasn’t interested in that. It was really cool to see him step into the Alfa team. Then when he got the job at Ferrari, I was just so happy for him.

“I think just the stars aligned, I think it really wouldn’t have happened without him. So I’m really grateful and really excited about the work that he’s doing there.”

Vasseur later admitted that it was “not that difficult” to convince Hamilton to move to Ferrari, but added that the Briton’s arrival does signal a key turning point for the Scuderia.

“If he chose to join Ferrari, it confirms to me that we can have the right car,” he said. “This is the ultimate goal.

“A driver like Lewis does not come to us on vacation and from my side, I think we are in the right place in terms of performance.

“We need a step forward and I can say that we are devoting a lot of resources to our next project.”

Under Vasseur, Ferrari continued to flourish in 2024 and scored further victories in Australia, Monaco and Italy — bolstering confidence in the passionate tifosi that the team can compete for both the drivers’ and constructors’ championships in 2025.

But despite the upward trend in results and the arrival of Lewis Hamilton, Vasseur has remained focused on producing results instead of becoming wrapped up in expectations. And as a result, he’s changed the culture of F1’s most historic outfit.

“I think Fred has changed quite a few things, which made a really big difference,” Leclerc explained to F1’s Beyond the Grid podcast .“First, to try and understand every single individual within the team, to try and understand the situation and to put them in the best possible conditions in order to extract the maximum out of each individual. That is definitely one of the biggest strengths of Fred.

“The other thing is that I feel like he’s always acting a bit like a balance in the team. Whenever you are having a really good race with Ferrari, everybody feels so good, so happy, and Fred is always the balance of saying: ‘yeah, it’s great, but now let’s re-centre a little bit because it’s only one race and we’ve got many other races,’ and exactly the same in bad moments when everybody feels down, Fred is always there to give us the positives in a difficult situation to re-motivate everybody.

“He’s very emotionally flat and that is a really good thing for a team like Ferrari. That’s what is needed in Ferrari, so I’m completely confident and I have full trust in what Fred does.”