Frederic Vasseur Admits Max Verstappen Made Ferrari “Useless”

Max Verstappen rendered the entire grid useless in his attempts to win his third championship title. Moreover, the utter dominance with which the Dutchman won the races in 2023 was commendable. His gap to the driver in P2 was almost always in double digits in seconds. However, for the 2024 season, despite Red Bull men leaving no room for error in the first two races, there is hope. There is hope at least in the Ferrari camp as Frederic Vasseur revealed his team’s current standing.

In his first year as Ferrari boss, Vasseur had to accept the bitter-sweet reality of the massive advantage Red Bull had over them. Despite being the only team stealing a win away from Red Bull, Ferrari was still a few car lengths away from the RB19. However, speaking about the competition in the current campaign, there are positive signs. Vasseur revealed that in his conversation with Motorsport while admitting 2023 was useless.

“In qualifying they have maybe two/three-tenths of an advantage over us, and in the race a little more. But it’s difficult to make an estimate because we don’t know if they were pushing hard. But the feeling is more positive: if you get back into this zone, you know that if you take a step, you can put a little pressure on them. When we were one second [away] it was useless, but now with a good start we can be there, we can fight,” he admitted. (Translated via Google)

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There are positive signs despite Verstappen admitting the RB20 suits him better than its intimidating predecessor. However, Ferrari wasn’t sitting idle as well and they’ve moved in the right direction as well. They have finally managed to make their car more stable and fixed a few persistent reliability and high tire degradation issues.

This is exactly what David Coulthard pointed out Ferrari needs to fix to mount a challenge to Red Bull.

David Coulthard believes Ferrari can challenge Max Verstappen under one condition

Ferrari has had a strong car in the past two seasons. Their pace over one lap has been on equal footing as the Red Bull challengers. However, when it comes to longer distances, that’s where the Italian teams’ cars were lacking. The race pace of the past two Ferrari challengers was abysmal, to say the least.

However, in 2024 the Italian team took a step in the right direction and made a car that has fixed a few of its lingering problems. The problems are expected to be completely resolved with the upcoming “aggressive” upgrade package which will be systematically introduced starting from the Australian GP. This is exactly what David Coulthard admitted Ferrari needs to do to challenge Red Bull.

He said, “I don’t have a crystal ball, but you’ve got to believe Ferrari had a strong car last year in terms of single-lap pace. If they’ve managed to improve on whatever it was that was making their race pace difficult, then they are a real contender.“

We are not sure if Ferrari will be catching the RB20 from the upcoming weekend onwards but the upgrade package which is expected to be fully integrated by Imola should give them considerable gains. Let’s hope for everyone’s sake Ferrari can catch the front runners and deliver some exciting races.