Vasseur warns: “Melbourne? It’s too early to make predictions. And Australia won’t be the end of the championship”

Impossible predictions In a Formula 1 that always goes fast, Fred Vasseur tries to preach calm. The Ferrari team principal was inevitably one of the great protagonists of the presentation of the new SF-26 on the track, on the friendly track of Fiorano. With the advent of the new regulatory cycle, the Scuderia aims to become a protagonist again and erase a disastrous 2025 which ended without victories and in fourth place in the Constructors’ standings. In a season of such drastic changes, however, Vasseur is aware that it is necessary to look at the long term, even more so in a season made up of 24 GPs and six Sprints. To journalists who asked him what Ferrari’s expectations and forecasts are in view of the first race of the season in Melbourne, scheduled in a month and a half, Vasseur replied that we cannot yet have an idea of ​​what will happen in Australia on March 8th. “Honestly, it’s too early to make predictions – declared the number one from the red pit wall – we’re here to work, develop, improve and then we’ll see what the situation will be in Melbourne. There’s still a long time to go in Melbourne, but today [l’altroieri, n.d.r.] it was important to be able to get the car on the track without problems. This is positive, but we still have a long way to go and I think that the pace of development will be much higher this season compared to what you saw last year or the year before.” One in 24 The fact that all the teams are essentially starting from scratch suggests a season in which we could see different values depending on the type of track but also the time of year: those who start out strong could run aground later in development and vice versa, those who start with greater difficulties could have a greater margin for growth in the second half of the championship. For all these reasons Vasseur wanted to reiterate that it would be wrong to draw absolute truths from what the outcome of the first GP of 2026 will be, whatever it may be. “No one knows what the situation will be in a couple of weeks – reiterated the Ferrari team principal – but we know that we must certainly do our best to continue collecting data, developing the car and focusing on ourselves. We’ll see how it goes in Melbourne, but Melbourne won’t be the end of the championship. I predict that we will have a huge pace of development. As far as aerodynamics are concerned, this week we are still making an important step and this applies to us and to everyone. We have to stay focused on ourselves, try to do a good job to develop over the next two weeks and during the season. But now it is still too early to have expectations,” concluded Vasseur.