Lewis Hamilton: Ferrari ‘not worried’ by new driver’s recent form for Mercedes
Ferrari will unveil its 2025 car in Maranello on January 19, a day after F1’s first official “season launch” is held at London’s O2.
Vassell said Hamilton would not be doing any more public activities for the team.
“We have to be completely focused on this season,” he said. “It’s going to be a very intense period from day one to launch and I want everyone to be completely focused on performance.
“We launched the championship and we launched the car. Those were two events and for me it was too much. Or let’s say, it was enough. I wanted to focus on development and performance and not focus on presentation.”
Vasseur has spoken for the first time about the conversations he had with Hamilton last winter that led to him joining Ferrari.
“In 2023 we won more races than Mercedes, so it was not difficult to convince him that Ferrari would be a good project,” he said.
“His plan to drive for Ferrari has been brewing in his mind for at least 22 or 23 years because we discussed it in 2004. It’s not too difficult.
“Sometimes it’s also a matter of coincidence or all the planets aligning, he’s in the market, Ferrari is available and so on. The connection is simple. We started talking a year ago and it turned out it wasn’t difficult to convince him.”
Ferrari lost the final race of 2024 to McLaren by 14 points, and Vasseur said he expected next season to be another battle between the top four teams including Red Bull and Mercedes. A fierce battle.
“The little things are what we have to do to win next year,” he said. “We’ve made good progress in every aspect but we’re still 14 points behind in the table. That’s a lot but almost nothing, it’s a DNF, a match incident, a strategic decision.”
“We are talking about the details of every pillar. Every mistake, every decision will make a huge decision. I’m sure next year’s championship will also be tight and we can’t let a point slip away.”
