New Ferrari driver still going strong at 40
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Ferrari needs some praise. This season could have proven extremely tricky to navigate with Carlos Sainz — as Lewis Hamilton admitted was the case at Mercedes — given the fact he knew he was leaving the team at the end of the year, but by getting a simple announcement out of the way in February and then focusing on Sainz so heavily, it avoided that scenario.
Try and push the team on Hamilton’s arrival throughout 2024 and it would very quickly return conversation to its current driver line-up, and its target of winning the constructors’ championship.
While it fell 14 points short, it was still extremely impressive in the way it handled the situation with Sainz, including the class of releasing him to drive for Williams immediately after the race in Abu Dhabi.
But that wasn’t his final outing in a Ferrari, as the team delivered him with a particularly special parting gift at Fiorano on Tuesday morning. Sainz got to drive a 2022 car alongside his father Carlos Sainz Sr, with the pair of them sharing the track. Charles Leclerc even showed up to watch, along with team principal Fred Vasseur.
A family affair for Sainz (Jr)’s farewell
Ferrari
“We did the farewell for Carlos this morning and he did some laps with the car, and his father also,” Vasseur said. “I think it was the best way to thank all of them for what they did for the team, and also Carlos senior, but I think with Carlos junior — I had at least two good seasons.
“It was probably the most emotional part of the season for me, in Melbourne when he won the race, one week after the surgery, and last year when we had the recovery after the summer break that he was the guy who did the pole position in Monza, the win in Singapore. His contribution was very important to the improvement of the team.
“I know that it was not an easy situation for him when I had to give him the call in February. You can imagine it was a tough situation. But he was able to keep the same approach all the year, to be very professional, very dedicated, to fight until the last corner of the last lap of the last race. It was a bit emotional, this one.
“We had two good seasons with Carlos, and I think he had more than two of them with the team. It’s always emotional. Even for the father it was emotional.”
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The send-off was a line in the sand moment. No sooner had the Sainz family finished running on track, then Vasseur welcomed a group of international media to the test track that lunchtime for a Christmas meal and, more importantly (honestly), to reflect on where Ferrari finds itself at the end of 2024.
Unlike on previous occasions, it was finally time to turn attention to Hamilton’s arrival.
Vasseur would not be drawn on exactly when the seven-time world champion would drive a Ferrari for the first time, with some testing of previous car (TPC) outings planned in January but dependent on the weather.
Ferrari could run Hamilton at Fiorano, Imola or even Mugello if it wants — given the vicinity of all three to both Maranello and each other — but winter weather means it might need to change plans at short notice and so isn’t setting a date. Yet it does know the time ahead of testing will pass quickly.
“It’s always a challenge, starting from the beginning of January until the launch of the season on 18 Feb in London, and we will do the [2024 car] launch the 19th in Maranello,” Vasseur explained. “It means it’s critical that you have only six weeks, it’s not easy. But I think he’s also coming with his own experience. He’s not the rookie of the year – so it means that I’m not worried at all about this.
“It’s also the continuity of the previous regulations and so that means for us, we have some reference. I’m not worried, but it’s true that it’s a challenge. If you imagine that you could go to Bahrain and have the sandstorm as we had a couple of years ago. It’s tough, but it’s tough for everybody on the grid. We know that we have only three days there.”
GP2 team boss Vasseur with Hamilton in 2006. The pair will be reunited almost two decades on
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There’s clearly going to be a commercial benefit to Hamilton’s arrival at Ferrari, but the short preparation time leads Vasseur to completely dismiss the idea of staging an event to present the team’s new driver.
“We have to be focused on the season. As we said before, it will be a very tight period between the first day and launch, it’s a matter of weeks and I want to have everybody focus on performance.
“It means that we will have the launch of the championship, we will have the launch of the car. For me, it’s already two events, and it’s far too much! No, no, I want to be focused on development, performance and not to do the show.”
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It’s a matter-of-fact approach from Vasseur that has so far proven extremely successful at Ferrari. There remains huge passion and attention towards Ferrari, and a romance around the team that few others can claim to have, but the Frenchman has found a middle ground where he doesn’t try to quell that yet simultaneously doesn’t play up to it either.
He knows the best way of the partnership being the biggest success possible stems from performances on track, and while Vasseur wants to focus on Hamilton’s integration as soon as Ferrari can, he also insists there hasn’t been a single doubt about his form, despite self-critical comments from the 39-year-old himself at times.
“Honestly, I think that he had a tough moment in quali, but also he had… I don’t think that the quali of Abu Dhabi, for example, was linked to the performance of Lewis. He had very good races in Vegas, in Abu Dhabi and I was never – really, never, never, never – worried about the situation.
“I’m really convinced that this situation, and I don’t want to blame Lewis or Mercedes, but this situation, it’s not easy to manage and I can understand that if it’s not going very well, you can suffer of this relationship.
“It was not [sitting] very well in his mind – he was clear in Brazil about this, for example – but he also did very, very well in the last couple of events. I’m not worried at all.”
Charles Leclerc will be a lofty benchmark for Hamilton
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Neither should Vasseur be, but he’s clearly ensuring Ferrari buys into his calm approach. There are still no big declarations or predictions, and neither is he willing to let Hamilton’s arrival distract the team from needing to work on all of the details that can make a difference in another close championship fight.
In fact, the Ferrari team principal is expects such a tight battle he believes “we can’t let one point [get] away” at any stage of the season, emphasising the need to embed Hamilton quickly within the team.
It might be huge business off the track to have Hamilton joining Ferrari, but Vasseur’s focus is very much on doing the business on it from the word go.
