Vasseur urges Ferrari to ignore title talk and stay focused on Spa after Silverstone win

Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur has urged his squad to set aside championship talk following Charles Leclerc’s victory at the British Grand Prix, insisting the team’s inconsistency makes any title conclusions premature.

Leclerc’s Silverstone win was Ferrari’s second in three races, following Lewis Hamilton’s breakthrough victory in Barcelona — the first of his career in Ferrari red. Yet sandwiched between those two results was a difficult Austrian Grand Prix weekend in which the team struggled badly, and Vasseur says that contrast is precisely why he refuses to be drawn on the Scuderia’s title credentials.

“After Barcelona, I had the comment ‘Ah, Ferrari is back in the championship’. I said no,” Vasseur told reporters. “The week after you told me Ferrari is nowhere. I said no. I will have exactly the same approach with everybody at home. To say: ‘Guys, we had a good weekend. Now let’s be focused on Spa. It’s not that we are champions. We are also not nowhere. We are improving step by step. It is like it is.”

The results have nonetheless kept Ferrari in contention. Hamilton sits just 32 points behind Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli in the drivers’ standings, while Ferrari trails Mercedes by 78 points in the constructors’ championship with more than half the season remaining.

Vasseur acknowledged that the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps will present a different set of challenges to Silverstone, particularly for the 2026 power units given the circuit’s long straights and demanding energy harvesting requirements. He also conceded that Mercedes retain a performance edge in most conditions.

“I think Mercedes, honestly, they still have a small advantage on pure performance,” he said.

For Vasseur, the discipline of race-by-race focus is non-negotiable. “I never try to draw a conclusion after one race, two races, a good result, a bad result,” he said. “I’m just focused on doing more and to do better. It’s true for me, it’s true for everybody at the factory. Then it’s your job to speak about the championship, but I never did it.”