Vasseur admits early switch of focus to 2026 sapped morale at Ferrari

Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur says the decision to stop development of last year’s car and switch to preparing for 2026 earlier than planned had a psychological impact that he did not foresee.

A tough start to 2025 included a disqualification of both cars in China and left Ferrari a long way adrift of McLaren early in the year. That played a part in the decision to divert further resources to the 2026 project, and while Vasseur says the sporting result will only be seen during the coming season, he had not appreciated how it would effect the entire team last year.

“To know if you took the right way or not, it's another story that nobody knows today,” Vasseur said. “But today we still have a huge rate of development compared to what we were doing with the ’25 car.

“This call to stop after five or six races was a tough one. I'm still convinced that it was the good one, but if I underestimated something at this stage, it was the psychological effect on every single team member, including drivers.

“For sure it was for good reasons – it was to be focused on ’26, to try to get the best this season – but on the other hand, you are into the season and you have still 20 races to go, and you know that you won't bring any more development, it's difficult. And probably I underestimated this for them; also for me personally.”

Ferrari’s 2025 car had design issues relating to the suspension and how the car could be run – highlighted in China early on – that needed rectifying during the season, but Vasseur is confident in the tools at Maranello that are being used for the new car.

“Honestly, the correlation between the CFD, wind tunnel and track went well the last couple of years and we didn’t have an issue," he said. “It’s true that starting a new project with different tires and so on, we will all have to do a loop of correlation. It's probably one of the topics on the table for the test days in Barcelona. It's more an unknown area than the 2025 project – it was more the continuity of the previous one. But this topic is true for everybody.”