Fred Vasseur believes the performance gaps between the Ferrari SF-24, the Red Bull RB20, the McLaren MCL38 and the Mercedes W15 were “greatly reduced” during the F1 2024 season.

And he pointed to Mercedes‘ dominant performance at the Las Vegas Grand Prix as a perfect example of how small details can make a huge difference on track.

Did the Mercedes W15 cost Ferrari the F1 2024 title in Las Vegas?

Additional reporting by Pablo Hidalgo

After Red Bull and Max Verstappen produced the most dominant season in Formula 1 history in 2023, the F1 2024 campaign proved to be a much closer contest.

Red Bull slipped to a disappointing third in the Constructors’ standings as McLaren claimed their first teams’ title in 26 years, with Verstappen clinching the Drivers’ crown with two races to spare.

The four-time World Champion was restricted to nine grand prix victories across the season, down from 19 in 2023, having gone 10 races without a win – his longest barren spell since 2020 – between June and November.

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All four frontrunning teams claimed at least one one-two finish, with Mercedes the final team to achieve the feat in Las Vegas.

Ferrari were widely expected to excel in Vegas after Charles Leclerc set pole position and challenged for victory upon F1’s return to Nevada in 2023.

However, the Mercedes W15’s excellent tyre warm up in cold conditions allowed George Russell to dominate from pole, with Lewis Hamilton recovering from 10th on the grid to finish second.

Leclerc and team-mate Carlos Sainz were forced to settle for third and fourth respectively in what proved to be a significant blow to Ferrari’s Constructors’ title hopes, with the Scuderia ultimately falling short of McLaren by 14 points.

Speaking to Italian publication Autosprint, Vasseur revealed that Ferrari’s pace relative to Red Bull and McLaren was exactly where they expected it to be in Vegas, only for Mercedes to “change the scenery” with a dominant display.

He said: “The gap between the cars has been greatly reduced.

“It can happen that a car fits better or worse to one track than another and this creates an advantage.

“Under normal conditions, the difference is made by the management of the tyres, the graining, the mistakes of the drivers and the teams.

“They are very fine balances, where a detail is enough to move the hierarchy.

“In Las Vegas, we were where we expected to be compared to Red Bull and McLaren, which are just a few tenths.

“The Mercedes, on the other hand, was simply unbeatable, of another level, and this literally changed the scenery.

“This year the differences between teams have been reduced because everyone has worked well on their weaknesses.

“McLaren improved on the slow, we on the fast.”

Ferrari will welcome Hamilton to the team next month, having announced in February that the seven-time World Champion will arrive on a multi-year contract from F1 2025.

Hamilton will replace Sainz, who has moved to Williams ahead of the new season.

Ferrari’s F1 2025 preparations are poised to kick off with what is expected to be a two-day test at the team’s Fiorano test track on January 21-22, when Hamilton is likely to made his on-track debut behind the wheel of either the 2022 or 2023 car.

Ferrari have traditionally held a so-called ‘wake-up’ test in January, designed to get team and drivers back up to speed ahead of official pre-season running.

Ferrari’s 2025 car, codenamed Project 677, will be launched on February 19 – one day after F1’s season-launch event, involving all 10 teams, in London – before a three-day pre-season test is held in Bahrain on February 26-28.

The F1 2025 season is scheduled to begin with the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne on March 16.

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