Ferrari principal prepared to 'take risks' in 2025 F1 championship fight

Ferrari finished as runners-up in the constructors' standings, just 14 points behind winners McLaren, who won their ninth championship, though the Italian team still hold the most with 16 wins.

Their second-place finish marked a vast improvement over 2023 when they finished a staggering 454 points behind Red Bull.

With Lewis Hamilton joining the team for next season, alongside Charles Leclerc, Vasseur is confident in Ferrari's ability to challenge for the title again but expects to be going head-to-head with McLaren, Mercedes and Red Bull.

"Everybody is taking risks," Vasseur told the F1 website. "If you don't take risks, you're dead.

"We know the development of this car; it's never easy as we are at the ascent of the development and it's more and more difficult.

"Everyone is taking risks, and we have to take risks also because 2025 will be a strange season. We will have to switch quite early with the 2026 project, which means the car you put on track in Bahrain will be crucial."

Waving goodbye to 2024 soon pic.twitter.com/PXSHmsOu5K

— Scuderia Ferrari HP (@ScuderiaFerrari) December 20, 2024

Both Leclerc (356) and the departing Carlos Sainz (290) registered career-high points tallies in 2024 as they finished third and fifth in the drivers' standings.

The Monagasque's 13 podium finishes reflected his best season in F1, while Sainz claimed his ninth such finish in the final race in Abu Dhabi, equalling his own best year in the competition (2022).

"It was a good season for us, for sure, with ups and downs as with everyone, but with more ups than downs," Vasseur said. "It was a very good season compared to 2023.

"We're going in the right direction. We improved in every single pillar of performance – reliability, strategy, pit stops, pure performance and on KPIs, we were five wins against one and on points, we scored 60% more points in 2024 than in 2023.

"Everything is going in the right direction. We missed the last step, but when we went to Abu Dhabi, the percentage of chance to win was very low.

"But it's not in Abu Dhabi that we missed something. Abu Dhabi itself was a good event, it's more in Canada we had a double zero, or in the summertime we missed something."

"There is no big difference [to their approach]. We are trying to improve on every single area of the performance, in every single department of the company. It's small step by small step.