Ferrari has found itself at the centre of a maelstrom in recent weeks, with relentless speculation about team boss Fred Vasseur.

Italian media have suggested that all is not well behind the walls of Maranello, but replacing Fred Vasseur would merely restart the cycle the Scuderia has been trapped in for most of the last two decades.

Fred Vasseur’s future the subject of speculation

In the approach to the Canadian Grand Prix, a coordinated morning of very similar reports from a raft of Italian media outlets suggested that Fred Vasseur’s role as team boss is currently under scrutiny as a result of the Scuderia falling back from competing for outright victories.

The synchronised nature of these reports suggested that they weren’t written and published facetiously or maliciously – particularly given the prominence of publications such as Gazzetta and Corriere – and hints that a senior source has indicated, rightly or wrongly, that the situation is that the French executive’s position as team boss has become tenuous.

As can be expected, the speculation has been shot down as Ferrari dismissed it upon being approached by PlanetF1.com, but the noise hasn’t gone away as the all-important three races tick by; the reports suggested that the Canadian, Austrian, and British grands prix could be critical for Vasseur’s future as he eyes a contract extension beyond the end of this season.

Up until recently, Vasseur has been seen as a breath of fresh air at Ferrari – a no-bulls**t, heads-down type of boss unwilling to engage in hyperbolic promises and possessing a steadfast determination to stick to his calm, methodical approach.

Succeeding Mattia Binotto, Vasseur clearly did instigate change, particularly on the strategic and communications front, as the Maranello-based squad slowly but surely improved from decision-making borne of outright constant chaos in 2022 to merely being occasionally eyebrow-raising in 2025.

The car’s performance also improved throughout 2023 and ’24, to the point where the SF-24 ended the season as a capable equal to McLaren’s title-winning MCL38 – if not even, occasionally, its superior.

But the performance has fallen away dramatically this season.

A move to a pull-rod suspension was an unusual decision to make for the final year of the current regulations, with one leading rival team source telling PlanetF1.com during pre-season testing in Bahrain that the decision was “jaw-dropping” to make this late in the game.

It was clear Ferrari had opted for revolution with the SF-25 and, while Vasseur didn’t personally design the car, the buck for this decision stops with him.

The SF-25, of the four top teams, is usually the fourth-quickest, and occupies third in the championship by dint of Red Bull’s one-sided efforts with Max Verstappen.

The feeling was that the development potential of the SF-25 was higher than what was capable with the SF-24, but it’s clear that, relative to its usual competition, Ferrari has taken a clear step backward in terms of competitiveness.

Experienced F1 engineer Rob Smedley, himself a veteran of Ferrari, spoke about why this year represented a good opportunity for the team to carry out experimentation ahead of the rules reset next season.

“It feels like it would be something that you would do for ’25, learning for ’26, or at least to make a decision about ’26. You could make a more rational decision,” he told the Formula For Success podcast earlier this year.

“Even though the pull-rod suspension will be fairly innocuous for the drivers, there’s not much feeling for the drivers, and there’s not much feeling from a vehicle dynamics point of view… In fact, it’s usually slightly worse, because the mass is slightly higher for a pull-rod suspension rather than push-rod at the front end, at least, depending on the chassis height.

“So it can be a little bit worse. So they must have found something that they want to do in terms of aerodynamics. But, that’s a big change to make in a year like this.”

While the car’s relative performance is clearly not what was hoped for, the very perception of discontent does Vasseur a great disservice; even if the French businessman is unproven as a top-flight leader at F1 level.

Ferrari’s most successful time period in F1 came under French team boss Jean Todt, who, together with Ross Brawn, Rory Byrne, and Michael Schumacher, created an era of dominance that saw the German driver sweep five consecutive titles.

But that run of titles began in 2000, and came after three years of last-round defeats; it’s a scenario which it seems unimaginable to think would be accepted nowadays. Having taken over as Ferrari team boss in 1993, it took four years for Todt to pull the Scuderia into a shape in which it could even start thinking about titles.

Under then-Ferrari chairman Luca di Montezemelo, Todt and Ferrari’s other senior leaders eventually rewarded this patience in abundance.

The stability of the operation meant Todt’s decision-making was eventually vindicated, and it created the one and only spell during Ferrari’s long, long history in which it is indisputable the Italian team was the best in Formula 1; it is this period of domination which is the outlier in what has otherwise been a traditionally chaotic, but occasionally successful, team burdened down by its own prestige and its resulting politics.

But what made the critical difference was that Di Montezemolo showed the patience needed to give Todt the time to allow his organisation to breathe, to prosper and thrive, and, eventually, deliver upon its promise.

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Fred Vasseur: ‘We’ve changed everything… except one thing’

Following the publication of the coordinated speculation ahead of the Canadian Grand Prix, Vasseur showed that he isn’t going to take any Machiavellian tactics lying down.

“It is not about me, because I can manage this, but it is about the people of the team and to throw their names like this is disrespectful for them and for their family,” he said.

“I don’t understand the target? Perhaps it is to give s**t to the team, and in this case, I don’t see the point. Maybe for them it is to exist? But it is clearly hurting the team.

“And when you are fighting for the championship, every detail makes the difference, and since we have arrived here, we have just been talking about this (his future). And if that is their target, they have reached their goal.”

It’s the same cycle Ferrari has found itself in through the last decade, towards the end of Maurizio Arrivabene’s largely competitive tenure as the threat of Mattia Binotto came into focus, which Binotto himself fell victim to in 2022.

“We must ask ourselves the right questions,” Vasseur pointedly said to France’s Canal+.

“If Ferrari hasn’t won for years, we’ve changed the team principal and the drivers, and we’ve changed everything… except one thing.”

What the “one thing” that Vasseur is referring to isn’t clear, but a reasonable guess could be that he is referring to senior management figures such as chairman John Elkann, who has been in his position since 2017 and has overseen three different team principals during the eight years since.

In that same time period, Mercedes has been led by Toto Wolff – who has been in his role since 2013 – and Red Bull by Christian Horner – who has been in charge since 2005. With McLaren having gone through a successful rebuild period in recent years, it’s clear that Ferrari’s revolving-door approach is the outlier in the top teams.

Yet, instead of acknowledging the failures of this approach, it appears the seeds of discontent have already been planted. By whom isn’t clear, but it seems a particularly unlikely coincidence that several prominent Italian publications could have been fed a completely false narrative, to the point of all being hoodwinked, without having a lot of faith in their sources.

Another guess at what Vasseur could be referring to is the team’s mentality, the expectation of success that means it so rarely achieves it.

Worse, the tenures of the team bosses are actually getting shorter and shorter, with Vasseur just two and a half years in. Binotto and Arrivabene each had four years, while Domenicali, Todt’s successor, had six full seasons; Marco Mattiaci’s 2014 stint was widely regarded as a strategic choice to bring about significant change rather than being a long-term appointment.

If Ferrari has already made up its mind to move on from Vasseur at the end of his contract this year, it will essentially start afresh all over again, equipped with a car that the next team boss likely won’t have played a hand in creating.

Such a decision will do nothing to dispel the notion that the role of Ferrari team boss is nothing but a poisoned chalice, a potential career-breaker, where the smallest inconveniences of a team’s normal surges and dips in competitiveness can cost you your job and, possibly, your reputation.

This is a time in which Vasseur, no matter his own levels of self-belief and confidence, needs Ferrari’s leaders to step forward and declare their confidence in him, and do so by quickly locking down his new contract.

It’s the first time in two-and-a-half years that the upward momentum under Vasseur has wavered and, rather than tear things apart to start again, Elkann and Ferrari need to do what Di Montezemelo did and display the patience that has been so sorely lacking since the days of Stefano Domenicali’s tenure as team boss.

Otherwise, Ferrari will only show that it has learned nothing from the mistakes that keep it locked in a cycle of mediocrity, unable and unwilling to take the steps needed to match the brilliance of the likes of McLaren, Red Bull, and Mercedes; each in themselves having gone through the peaks and troughs that Ferrari reportedly can’t accept.

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