Frédéric Vasseur is convinced that Lewis Hamilton will be an asset for Ferrari in its fight for world titles. While the gaps are tight, the director of the Scuderia trusts his future driver to seek out every ounce of performance, while bringing experience and a culture that will challenge Ferrari.
“I think it’s always important to have people coming from other teams with a different culture” Vasseur said. “It has nothing to do with the Italians, the English or anything else. It's just that we are in a sector where the transfer of know-how is important and we are a bit isolated.”
“It's already happening because we've been recruited a little bit by other teams and I think that's a good thing because you see things a little differently.”
“I am convinced that Lewis will come with his own experience, with his 18 years of F1 or his 17 years and his few titles, and so on. It is not that the performance comes only from my hero or from another . It comes from everyone and that’s important.”
Vasseur worked with Hamilton in F3 and GP2 at ASM then ART, and he sees him as an asset to find the missing performance: “I remember Lewis perfectly in 2006 in GP2, where he was already like that, pushing on small details. In the end, if you look closely, I think the average gap between McLaren and us in qualification is a few hundredths.”
“And we're really at that point, and it's also the case with Red Bull and Mercedes, that we're talking about details from 100 topics of the car. We really need to have that kind of mindset to chase the last thousandth in each area; I think Lewis will be a good asset for that too.”
