Ferrari boss Vasseur pushing risk-taking approach

Ferrari boss Fred Vasseur said he has been enabling the team to work without fear of mistakes or failure as the team enjoys an unexpected constructors’ championship challenge.

Ferrari is 36 points behind McLaren with three races, starting with Saturday’s Las Vegas Grand Prix, still to run.

The famous Italian team has not won either of F1’s championships since 2008, although McLaren’s drought stretches back to the previous season.

At different points over the course of its history Ferrari has been seen as a team suffocated by the pressure of its own history and a culture of fear.

Vasseur said he has been pushing the team in an aggressive direction.

“I just want to have people working as a team, for the team,” he told F1.com. “I want them to be aggressive, taking risks. The motivation is there. You don’t need to motivate the people here, sometimes you have to even calm them down a little bit.

“The most important thing is to accept we can do some mistakes, work on it, try to improve and have this mindset of trying to do a better job than the day before. We’re just trying to do a better job.”

He added: “The capacity to take risks and to assess the risk management is crucial in your business. We have to accept that you won’t blame someone if they are doing a mistake. It’s a culture, it’s not just a decision.

“We have to accept and take more risk, we have to manage these risks and we have to accept we will make mistakes. We will learn from this. We are in this process.

“I asked the team to be more aggressive and two or three races later [in Austin], we were disqualified last year! But it’s the price we have to pay. If we are closer to the limit, it will pay off in the end.”

McLaren still appear to be the favourites for the constructors’ championship, although the team has been distracted by Lando Norris’ diminishing drivers’ title fight against Max Verstappen.

Vasseur thinks that can only benefit Ferrari.

“I don’t want to speak about [the title] — my only focus is performance for the next session,” he said. “I try to keep the team on this approach. We are just focused on the next event, on the development in the short-term and mid-term — but we don’t think about the championship at all.

“By far it’s the best situation. All the media are focused on Red Bull and McLaren — this is mega for us!”