Through all his title victories in junior categories and the delivery of race wins for Maranello, Vasseur accepts that being on top is about brilliance in all areas.

That is why his spell at Ferrari has been one of evolution rather than revolution – and is more about chipping away to make everything slightly better than finding a dream ingredient that changes it all at once.

The result has been a drip of things slowly and steadily falling into place.

There is the standout capture of Lewis Hamilton for 2025 and, this week, confirmation of the signings of Loic Serra and Jerome d’Ambrosio from Mercedes.

But change goes far beyond just getting on board key figures, and Vasseur is clear that one of the fundamentals at a successful racing team is attitude.

So, for him, when he talks about how Ferrari has evolved from its troubled end to the 2022 campaign to being within touching distance of Red Bull, it is the mindset shift that stands out.

Gone is the sense of organised chaos that sometimes unfolded on the pit wall in tense strategy moments when the clear lines of communication, and willingness of someone to put their head above the parapet and take a decision, were almost non-existent.

Hamilton and Serra will link back up at Ferrari

Photo by: Sutton Images

Instead, what Vasseur sees, is individuals open to being a bit more on edge and willing to take a few more risks. This, he says, is crucial to overhauling Red Bull.

Speaking in an exclusive interview with Autosport about the changes he has made at Ferrari since his arrival, Vasseur says a willingness to push things much closer to the limit stands out.

“There has been some technical recruitment, and we made some changes internally in terms of the sporting director, strategy and so on,” he said. “I think it’s working very well.

«I want to take some risks because our competitors are taking risks. I think it’s the DNA of Red Bull, probably.» Fred Vasseur

“The good feeling that I have on the pit wall is that the atmosphere is very calm, that we have a good collaboration and this is… I think it’s efficient.

“But the other change, and it’s not [a question to me], you have to ask the question to others, but… I want to take some risks because our competitors are taking risks. I think it’s the DNA of Red Bull, probably.

“They are always at the limit everywhere. I’m sure that even when we were last year six-tenths off, it’s not that they have the magic bullet [that provides] six-tenths [advantage] with 20 horsepower more or 15-20 points of aero.

“It’s that they are just a bit better than us everywhere. I’m trying to push the culture of the company to be a bit more aggressive everywhere.”

Ferrari is aiming to close in on Red Bull

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

This element of playing it too safe is something that has cropped up before at Maranello, where there were suggestions the culture was based too much on people being scared to take risks in case they tripped up, and those failures then costing them their jobs.

Pushed on whether this had been the catalyst for what he found, Vasseur said: “I don’t know about the past, but it’s true that if you want to be on the safe side, on every single topic, you take one kilo of margin, you take two degrees of [wing] margin, you take two millimetres of ride-height margin, everybody has a much easier weekend.

«But at the end, you left on the table three-or-four-tenths.”

On the flipside, Vasseur accepts that strategy does not need to be so risky if the team is not in a situation with an uncompetitive car where it needs to roll the dice to overcome performance shortcomings.

It is why the improved SF-24, which is much better on tyre degradation, has brought benefits to the pitwall too.

“I think it’s much easier to have a good strategy when the pace is there,” he said. “And when you don’t have the pace, it doesn’t matter [about] the strategy, it’s always the wrong one.

“The fact that we are more performant into the race, it’s helping us to have good strategy, or very good strategy from the beginning of the season.”

Ferrari’s pit-strategies have faced criticism in recent years

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

Getting Red Bull out of its comfort zone

Vasseur’s focus right now is not just on getting the lap time that can get Ferrari to the front of the chasing pack against McLaren, Aston Martin and Mercedes. Instead, sights are set on Red Bull.

While no one is anticipating that the major upgrade package Ferrari is bringing to Imola will deliver a step that will lift the SF-24 clear of the RB20, Vasseur has been consistent throughout the year that it doesn’t have to be quicker than Red Bull.

As Miami openly showed (although it was McLaren that capitalised best), if you put Red Bull under pressure, then that leaves the door open for things to go wrong – either by its drivers making errors, or its pit wall slipping up.

“Sometimes for one-or-two-tenths, you can move from P3 to P8. It means that if you left something on the table, you are dead.» Fred Vasseur

Vasseur adds on Red Bull: “Last year they were in such a comfortable situation that we never put them, or almost never put them, into a situation to have to take a decision. It didn’t matter if it was Plan A or Plan B — they were in front.

“What we have to achieve is to be as close as possible, and to push them to ask the right question and to make sometimes a bad choice. When they make mistakes, then we have to be there, first step.

“The target is to be faster than them, for sure. It’s not to stay behind and to wait for something. But at least last year, I think with five or six tenths [of advantage] they were so easy, that even if they missed the start, they had enough margin to overtake one car per lap and after five laps they were P1 [again].

“But if the group is much closer and if you have just one or two-tenths advantage, you can’t overtake.”

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Vasseur is clearly revelling in his position as a bit of a disruptor right now – shaking up the mindset of Ferrari staff to be a bit more open to living on the edge, which then in turn will force Red Bull to roll the dice more.

But while such an approach is not without risks, it is something he is ready to accept in the quest to get the Prancing Horse back at the very front.

“Today, we have a huge convergence of performance,” he said. “Sometimes for one-or-two-tenths, you can move from P3 to P8. It means that if you left something on the table, you are dead.

“So, I think with the experience of this approach, you are more in control if you are trying to be always at the limit. And you can improve the management of the delta because then you are on it every single weekend, every single session.

“If you take margin, you are safe and you don’t improve. So, it [risk taking] is the direction that we have to take as a team, collectively. I’m the first one to push. And by the way, I’m the first one to accept that we can do mistakes.”

No pain, no gain, as they say.

The team did so to ensure it had enough time if there were teething problems for what is quite a substantial change, not only to the aerodynamic performance of the car but also to how the power unit and ancillaries are cooled.

A package of this magnitude has taken some time for Ferrari to develop, prepare and manufacture, with the team clearly working around Formula 1’s globe-trotting schedule to deliver the updates upon the series’ return to Europe.

The logic behind this decision will undoubtedly have been driven by the last two races having also been sprint events, leaving only a single practice session at each in which to assess the difference in behaviour and find the right set-up with the new parts for the competitive session.

Ferrari SF-24 side Imola comparison (numbered)

Photo by: Giorgio Piola

The most obvious change to the SF-24 is in the adoption of an overbite sidepod inlet arrangement [1], which follows more closely in the footsteps of Red Bull, albeit other teams have other overbite variants.

In Ferrari’s case, it has opted to connect its new horizontal inlet with the bypass duct’s inlet beside the chassis [3], creating more of a P-shaped inlet, similar to the layout on the Alpine and Mercedes.

This has resulted in the outlet beside the cockpit and halo being discontinued as part of the update though, with the vanes also altered as a consequence [4], as they’ve now become even more stylised and look like a Cobra when viewed from the front.

The change from an underbite to an overbite alters the height of the sidepod’s undercut, providing more room to capture the airflow as it moves down and around the bodywork, even if that does mean there’s now also the inlet framed within that region.

The upshot of the change is that the surfaces thereafter can also be optimised to improve flow to the rear of the car, with the waistline also adjusted quite considerably as part of the update [2].

The overbite also means that there’s no longer an inlet in the path of the sidepod’s upper surface, with the flow over the sidepod likely improved as a consequence.

Reconfiguring the sidepod bodywork and cooling parameters, the engine cover and cooling outlets have also been refreshed, with a similar single but larger outlet to the one used in Japan deployed as part of the package tested in Fiorano [7].

There’s also some detail changes on the surface of the floor that indicate there’s a heap of work going on under the SF-24 too. The scrolled forward section of the edge wing [5] has been altered, with a more aggressive camber applied, while the strakes are also bolder than before to match.

There are further changes to the edge wing’s profile downstream, whilst the support bracketry around the floor’s split line has also changed, as rather than using the support spar’s bracket to hold both sections in position, there’s now another horseshoe bracket thrown into the mix that allows more segmentation of the two sections [6].

Interestingly, it’s an arrangement we’ve seen in 2023 (below, left), suggesting the team decided to use a solution that likely had performance benefits in the past that they couldn’t fully exploit.

The rear wing has also been altered [8], as the team has made some adjustments to both the tip section and the endplate cutout as they look to both increase the upper flap’s wingspan, while also altering the tip vortex to improve the wing’s efficiency.

The tip section now has a much squarer profile, rather than being rolled over to match the shape of the mainplane ahead, which has resulted in the support bracket between the two sections also being made shorter and moved further inboard.

These changes then expose more of the mainplane’s trailing edge and endplate cutout, allowing the designers a little more freedom in terms of optimising their shape.