Personnel change is first part of ‘complete review’ of Ferrari strategy – Vasseur

Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur says the decision to promote Ravin Jain as chief strategist over Inaki Rueda forms part of a complete review of the team’s strategy division.

The team was heavily criticised in 2022 following a series of perceived errors with their strategy calls at key points during the season where they lost opportunities to compete for victories.

After Mattia Binotto stepped down as team principal at the end of the season, Vasseur was signed as his replacement from Alfa Romeo. Chief strategist Rueda was later replaced by 28-year-old Jain before the start of the 2023 season.

Asked by RaceFans why he decided to make the change to the team’s strategy personnel, Vasseur said that it was part of a wider review on how to improve the team across all areas which had been set in motion before he arrived.

“We had the discussion last week, but strategy is not about the person that you have on the pit wall,” Vasseur said.

“Strategy is the addition of tons of things: The software that you have at home, the team that you have at home, the communication flow is crucial and then you have a guy on the pit wall. For different reasons, we decided to do the move, but the move was also a bit initiated last year. We will review completely the approach on the strategy.”

Sitting alongside Red Bull boss Christian Horner in the team principals’ press conference, Vasseur pointed to the world champions’ own approach to improving their performance as something Ferrari must emulate in order to remain competitive.

“We need to have this approach in every single area of the team, in every single department and we have to do this job,” Vasseur said. “I’m pretty sure that Christian is doing the same to try to improve in every single area.

“If you stay at the same level two weeks in a row, you are dead – because everybody is improving. It’s part of the process. We tried to review what was working last year and what was not working and we took action. But it’s not about the person.”

Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz Jnr were fifth and 20th, respectively, in the opening practice session for the Bahrain Grand Prix today having only run on medium compound tyres. Leclerc’s rear wing was seen visibly flexing at high speed, but Vasseur said the team will not be running that configuration of wing for the rest of the weekend.

“It was a test item that we are not able to do last week,” he explained. “We tried to do it this morning but, as you saw, it was not very positive. We won’t run the wing during the weekend but we will be back soon.”

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