Max Verstappen has been extremely dominant in 2023 as he has barely put a foot wrong throughout the season. However, as per a recent report by Autosport, Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur believes that this dominance was a result of none of his rivals putting him under pressure. The Frenchman believes that if Verstappen faces pressure, even he would be prone to more errors and mistakes.
Vasseur began his interview by admitting that Verstappen had indeed been almost flawless throughout the 2023 season. He explained that the Red Bull driver has had clean starts in almost all of the races and has made no mistakes during the qualifying sessions.
Fred is right. It’s easy to look serene driving “solo races” in the best car with zero pressure from within the team or the outside.
I suspect that if Golden Boy will crack if he has to battle again. Yield or crash specials and wall hits incoming… #F1 https://t.co/dkBfETmIxR
— Rob Myers (@RobLMyers) December 3, 2023
However, Vasseur believes that Verstappen had it easy as no one put him under pressure. The Ferrari team principal said, “As everybody, he will do more mistakes when he will be under pressure. But nobody was able to put him under pressure this season except us at the last two or three events, or except Carlos in Singapore.”
Singapore was the only Grand Prix where a non-Red Bull driver won the race. Carlos Sainz managed to win the night race after Verstappen did not manage to get up to speed at the track at all. Red Bull had their worst race weekend of the year as this was the only race that they failed to win. Verstappen and Perez finished in P5 and P8 respectively.
Fred Vasseur does not want to be too optimistic for 2024
Fred Vasseur claimed that Ferrari slowly managed to close the gap to Max Verstappen and Red Bull as the season progressed. He said, “I think we are getting a bit closer to him. We are…I don’t want to say putting him under pressure because it is not true.”
Vasseur used the example of Abu Dhabi and claimed that Verstappen wasn’t really under any kind of real pressure at the season finale. However, he was definitely under a bit more pressure than he was at races at the start of the season.
Ferrari s’est appuyée sur Leclerc pour diriger le développement de la voiture 2024.
Maranello a mis beaucoup l’accent sur son “joyau”, car elle a pris en considération les différentes indications de Leclerc pour orienter le développement de la voiture vers le projet 2024. pic.twitter.com/Np8lvCrSqL
— Scuderia Ferrari FRA (@FerrariF1FRA) November 30, 2023
Ferrari will now head into 2024 with a brand new design concept instead of an upgraded version of their current car. While everyone is optimistic that it might help them bridge the gap between themselves and Red Bull, the Frenchman said, “I don’t want to be too optimistic because it was probably one of the issues we had last season.”
He explained that Formula 1 is always about comparison. Therefore, even if they do improve, how the team performs also depends on how much their rivals are improving.
