Fred Vasseur has ‘signed a top guy’ at Ferrari but won’t join the team till 2025 due to a special exit clause

The Ferrari F1 team has had a mixed bag of a season so far, and amidst all the chaos, its Team Principal, Fred Vasseur, has revealed that he has signed a recruit to help the team reach its F1 objectives. However, the recruit would only be able to contribute to the team from 2025 onward.

Ferrari will lose two of its main masterminds, David Sanchez and Laurent Mekies, next season, and keeping this in view, Fred Vasseur has started taking action at the Maranello-based team. The former is going to McLaren F1, whereas Mekies will be seen taking charge at Red Bull’s sister team AlphaTauri.

Vassuer has revealed that he’s started recruiting already because of the sport’s ‘Gardening Leave’ clause. According to this, a staff member has to wait several months before they move on to another team. While shedding light on the same, he told Marca, “But the reality of our business is that when you want to steer the boat a little bit, then we are not agile anymore.”

“We know that if we want to recruit, we are speaking not in days, we are speaking in years, I signed a top guy a couple of weeks ago to join in 2025. He will only work on the car in 2025 and 2026. It seems a long wait. But, on the other hand, if you don’t do it, it will be even worse in six months. You have to accept it as a basic of F1,” Vassuer added.

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Fred Vasseur feels Ferrari is heading in the right direction

While Ferrari has taken the long-term approach, it has got a stiff task on its hand during the ongoing Formula 1 season. Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz have not looked at ease inside the cockpit of the SF-23 and have often raised complaints. However, despite this, Vasseur keeps a steady head and, while talking about it, said, “I will never give up this one because for us to fix it is the best way to understand and to avoid a mistake.”

“For sure when you are developing, you are trying to develop different areas, and you are trying to do a better job on the car...We are developing the car in this direction to try to get consistency and to have something a bit easier to drive. Step by step we are going in the right direction,” he added.

Fred Vasseur, on the one hand, has acknowledged that Ferrari has got things to fix on the SF-23 but, on the other, has also made it known that the team is heading in the right direction in terms of its car’s development. The Austrian GP is just around the corner, and it is going to be fascinating to see how the team will perform at the event.

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