Written by Ferrari Team Principal Fred Vasseur discusses the decision to switch focus early on 2026 and the new challenge ahead.
The sweeping changes to the 2026 chassis and power unit regulations offers an opportunity for every team in Formula 1 to make a leap up the pecking order. Some teams switched their attention to this year’s car very early in the hope of transforming their fortunes. One of those was Ferrari, who realised they had made a costly error with their 2025 machine and switched all of their resources to 2026 as early as last April, which all but ended their hopes of competing for either World Championship in 2025.
It was a bold decision – and one which means the next few weeks will be tense as they await the first run of their car at their shakedown, most likely at their own track at Fiorano, before running a ‘Spec A’ at the all-team private test in Barcelona at the end of January.
By the time they reveal ‘Spec B’ of their new machine for the two Bahrain tests, they will know whether the gamble to go all in early doors on 2026 with the development path they chose was the right one.
In 2025, Ferrari knew they were in a spot of bother when both cars were disqualified from the second race of the season in China. New recruit Lewis Hamilton, who had won the Sprint the day before, was excluded for excessive wear to his car’s plank – and this revealed a big issue for the team.
In order to get performance to compete with their rivals, Ferrari had to run their car very low to the ground but it was so low, the risk of being declared illegal was too great. So, for subsequent rounds – and around a third of the season – they had to run the car higher while they worked on a workaround. That allowed McLaren to race away at the front. The titles were lost.
That left team boss Fred Vasseur with a decision to make. Plough resources in to catch up or throw everything at next year, when the team – like all of their rivals – were starting with a clean sheet of paper. He bravely chose the latter, though, he admits he didn’t anticipate the negative impact of the resulting consequences of such a decision.
Both Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc were disqualified from the 2025 Chinese Grand Prix
“I underestimated the psychological effect of this decision on the team, on the drivers, on myself, and to go to the last 15 races without pure aero development, it’s also not an easy one,” he told me, when we chatted at Maranello.
“OK, it was for good reason, that it was my call, and I assumed the responsibility of this, that we were focused on 2026. But at the end of the day it was a tough season, that we also missed a couple of opportunities, that some crashes, some disqualifications, and this put us all the season on the backfoot.”
This was Vasseur’s third year at the helm of Formula 1’s most famous team – and it was far and away the toughest not just of his time at the Italian squad but indeed of his career. A year after seeing his team miss out on the Teams’ Championship by just 14 points, his red cars had dropped back and were struggling to contend for podiums, let alone wins.Lawrence Barretto’s 5 bold predictions for 2026
There was speculation mid-season that his future was under threat, to which Vasseur responded bullishly and defiantly in a bid to protect his staff and stop such chatter destabilising the team. The Ferrari board backed him with a new contract, but Ferrari’s continued lack of performance on track (they had upgrades until Belgium, which was before the summer break, but nothing else as a direct result of the end of development while others around them, including Red Bull ploughed on with R&D) kept the pressure on Vasseur’s shoulders.
“Yeah, it’s tough, but I think it’s the price that you have to pay about the emotion around the team, and sometimes I saw that it was completely unfair with my guys, and I reacted perhaps in the right way, that if I have to do it again, I will do it again,” he says. “My job is also to protect them, and to get the best from them, the rest is not a drama.”
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Fred Vasseur reflects on Ferrari’s ‘tough’ season but ‘ready to fight’ again in 2026
‘The mood today is positive’
Ferrari ended up P4 in the 2025 Teams’ Championship, two places down on 2024 and behind champions McLaren, runners-up Mercedes and P3 finishers Red Bull. While Charles Leclerc managed seven podiums, neither he nor team mate Hamilton managed to secure a Grand Prix victory leaving Ferrari winless in a season for the first time since 2021. Despite the disappointing results, there remains hope internally 2026 will offer a turnaround in fortunes.
“The mood today is positive, the mood is focused on ’26, we have to learn and understand what we did wrong this season,” says Vasseur. “For sure we did things wrong, but we also had positives, and to try to do a better job, but I think it’s not linked to ’26 or ’25.
“I had exactly the same approach at the end of ’24, you have always positives and negatives into a season, and you have to always try to capitalise on what you did.”
Hamilton’s first year at Ferrari did not deliver the kind of success the seven-time World Champion and his new team had hoped. After 12 years with Mercedes, it was simply too much change – and it quickly became clear that the transition would take some time – with many of the changes to the car that he needed unable to be made until 2026.
I underestimated the challenge for Lewis.
Fred Vasseur, Ferrari Team Principal
“We had lots of discussions internally, and with Lewis also about this, to understand where we missed the path of the season,” says Vasseur. “For me, I underestimated the challenge for Lewis, the challenge to change from Mercedes to Ferrari.
“He spent 20 years with Mercedes – McLaren Mercedes or Mercedes Mercedes – and then he moved to Ferrari where everything is different. It’s not just about the weather and the food, it’s about people around him, it’s about language, it’s about the name of the software, the name of the components on the car – everything.
“It means that as soon as you are missing something, if you let one tenth of a second on the table because you are not in control of everything, today one tenth of a second is five tenths position.
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Hamilton’s first year with Ferrari included plenty of challenges and adjustments for the seven-time World Champion
“Quite often when he had big issues in Qualifying, it was for almost nothing that he was out in Q1, but he was behind. I remember perfectly, Budapest was very difficult for him, but when we went to Q2 he was top, and Charles went to Q3 for one tenth, and then Charles did the pole position.
“At the end of the day it’s a matter of details, but details are the essence of the sport, and it’s where we have to put more, not focus, because the focus was there, but we have the experience of this, and we have to do a better job on every single detail.”Leclerc calls Ferrari’s focus shift to 2026 a ‘no-brainer’
Leclerc had a ‘mega strong’ 2025
While Hamilton toiled, Leclerc found a way to bring some silverware back to Maranello. The 28-year-old took seven podiums to finish fifth in the Drivers’ Championship.
“You know Charles is linked to the team and the team is linked to Charles by definition,” says Vasseur. “He did a great job this season. When we had to face tough times, he was there to push the team because he knows perfectly everybody to try to get the best from the situation and honestly he did very well.
“He was sometimes a bit unlucky with the situation, like Brazil, that it was a tough one for sure, also because it’s at this stage that we lost P2 probably, that it means that each time that we have an issue you are losing 18 points, but you are also giving points to your competitors, and it was a big hit for us, but overall he did a mega strong season.”
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Leclerc took seven podiums in 2025, but was unable to record a win
Vasseur is all too aware of the challenge facing Ferrari to bounce back this year. It’s not just about building a good car for the start of the season, but it’s also about having a concept that can be developed consistently and aggressively through the next five years of the current rules cycle.
It’s about spending money wisely, choosing the right developments at the right time and then executing strong weekends at the track to maximise performance. Vasseur and his team proved in 2024 that they can do that. Now they must find a way to react and do it consistently.
“Honestly the positive of [last] season was also the collective reaction that we had to the situation, and this was good and good for the future,” he says.
“We have a lot of hopes for 2026, as does everybody on the grid. It’s a new challenge, we start from scratch, we know perfectly that on the past when you had this kind of change of regulation, you can’t anticipate what will be the future of Australia.
“2009 for example, it was not on the plan that Brawn GP will be flying Race 1. We need to keep the focus on the development, on the team, on the production, not to spend energy to discuss about the others. Let’s push until the end of 2026.”