Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur stands by his decision to switch development focus to 2026 relatively early this year, but said he did not account for the negative “psychological” impact the lack of car upgrades in 2025 would have on staff and drivers.
Ferrari endured a difficult season in 2025 after starting the year off the pace of eventual champions McLaren and opting to switch its full development focus to 2026’s new regulations as early as April.
All teams faced a level of compromise in deciding how to split their resources between 2025 and 2026, but Ferrari opted to switch its full focus to next year relatively early at the expense of updates to its already underperforming 2025 car.
Vasseur said the advantages of switching early would only become apparent next year, but admitted it made life tough for the team in the second half of 2025.
“To know if you took the right way or not, it’s another story that nobody knows today,” he said. “But today we still have a huge rate of development compared to what we were doing with the ’25 car.
“This call to stop [2025 development] after five or six races was a tough one. I’m still convinced that it was the good one, but if I underestimated something at this stage, it was the psychological effect on every single team member, including drivers.
“Because for sure it was for good reasons, it was to be focused on ’26, to try to get the best for this [upcoming] season, but on the other hand, you are into the season and you have still 20 races to go, and you know that somehow you won’t bring any more development.
“It’s difficult, and probably I underestimated this for them, but also for me personally.”
A new set of regulations for 2026 promise to shake up the order but also mean teams enter the winter not knowing where they stand relative to competitors.
Vasseur believes the first indication of the competitive order will not emerge until the second and third tests in Bahrain, but says Ferrari intends to push development of its car as late as possible ahead of its launch event on Jan. 23.
“It’s quite often only when you discover what the others did, that you say, ‘oh I was mega aggressive’ or ‘I was mega conservative,'” he said when asked if Ferrari were taking risks with the development of its 2026 car.
“I don’t know about the others, but it’s true that we will have the picture, not in [the first test in] Barcelona I don’t think, so let’s say Bahrain, and you will see that different teams took different directions, sometimes perhaps a bit 180 degrees, but we don’t have the feeling to be aggressive or not.
“What is aggressive is to postpone the release of drawings to the max, to arrive in the last minute in Barcelona or in Bahrain with a car that will be assembled in the garage. This is aggressive.
“If you want to finish one month before, it’s not aggressive at all, it’s conservative. On this we will be aggressive for sure, because we were always.
“We will finish the assembly of the car the day before the launch, the launch will be the 23rd of January, which means we will finish the car on the 22nd, and this is to be aggressive.
“But everybody will do the same, now we have a convergence in the approach of the season, and everybody will do the same.”
