Charles Leclerc praised new team principal Fred Vasseur‘s impact on Ferrari as the team gears up for the 2023 Formula 1 season following a positive pre-season testing.
Ferrari sacked Mattia Binotto after a 2022 season that saw Ferrari start as title contenders but fade badly after the opening races helped by a series of strategic blunders and reliability problems.
Though Binotto had led a strong recovery from Ferrari‘s nadir of sixth place in 2020, bosses wanted a change in the shape of Vasseur and Leclerc said he can already see the good work at Maranello.
“It’s still very early days but I think what Fred is really good at is extracting the best out of the people by putting them in the best conditions,” Leclerc told the media. “And we can already see some benefits so that’s great.
“Then again, it was his first three days on track last week, so it’s still very early days. And we still need to see, I’m pretty sure he will discover much more things and see how the team works on a race weekend starting from tomorrow.
“But at least it feels good. And it was impressive to see how well he got at ease with such a big team. straightaway. So that’s, that was important too.”
Time will tell if changes were correct
The move at the top means Leclerc reunites with Vasseur after first working together in 2018 as Leclerc made his F1 debut.
But that’s not the only change to the Ferrari pitwall, as head of strategy Inaki Rueda has been moved to a factory and Ravin Jain will be in charge of strategy at the track.
However, Leclerc refused to comment on whether the changes would be successful long-term.
“Yes, there’s been a few changes, but I wouldn’t want to comment too much on that,” Leclerc added. “We are trying to do what’s best for the team.
“Fred came, there’s already few things but it’s to judge because these things are affecting the race in itself.
“So we’ll see and time will tell whether these were the right choice.”
