Fred Vasseur speaks out over Ferrari internal unrest triggered by sack rumours

Ferrari boss Fred Vasseur will have assurances to make over his future to concerned staff members following recent reports.

And that led Vasseur to issue a fresh plea against the claims which appeared in the Italian media questioning his future as Ferrari team principal, as he spoke of the unrest which it causes for the Ferrari personnel, and recalled a previous example where he had to “Google” who Eric Balbo was, Red Bull’s head to aerodynamics who was reported as Ferrari-bound.

Fred Vasseur warns a distracted Ferrari not a winning team

Ahead of the Canadian Grand Prix, Vasseur’s Ferrari future was called into question by the Italian press, the Scuderia having suffered an underwhelming start to the season with just three podium results scored – all courtesy of Charles Leclerc – plus a Sprint win from Lewis Hamilton in China.

Meanwhile a report in Germany claimed that Ferrari had approached Red Bull team principal Christian Horner, which PlanetF1.com understands to be accurate, though Horner, during the Canada race weekend, dismissed any idea of a Red Bull departure.

Vasseur was stern in his response to the speculation, and speaking on the matter once more after the Canadian Grand Prix, he highlighted the upset which it creates within Ferrari.

“To close this chapter, because I don’t want to put oil on the system, for myself, when I signed at Ferrari, I was perfectly aware of this, and I can’t blame someone except myself, that if I didn’t want to have this kind of story, it was better to stay out,” said Vasseur.

“But it’s very, very harsh for the team, for the 1500 people, to have your name spread like this on the press, ‘Okay, you have to change this one’, because it’s not that, just a name or a position, it’s someone with a family will have saw that.

“And now, each Monday, I have people coming in my office, ‘Is it true?’ ‘No, it’s not true. Stay calm.'”

Vasseur said it was a similar situation when Red Bull’s aero chief Eric Balbo was reported to be on his way to Ferrari last year, Vasseur revealing that he needed the help of the internet to work out who this was.

“Last year, Balbo was a good example that it was in the press that we signed Balbo,” Vasseur continued, “but I had to Google Balbo because I didn’t know the face of the guy. I never met him before.

“But you can imagine that Diego [Tondi], who is head of aero, when he saw something like this in the press, it’s quite harsh for him, because he doesn’t know if it’s true or not.”

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And Vasseur stressed that a “distracted” Ferrari is not a winning team.

“And this is putting a kind of… tension is not the right word, but entropy or distraction into the team,” Vasseur added, “and at the end of the day, we are in a competition with other teams, and if we are distracted or not focused on the right thing, we will lose the competition.”

Ferrari sit P3 in the Constructors’ Championship after 10 rounds of the F1 2025 season, the gap to runaway leaders McLaren already 191 points.

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