The season has just begun but what is slowly emerging is that i problems of Ferrari are not limited to the track. Last year, it was the team from Maranello who suffered the most from the consequences of a world championship fight that ended badly, starting with their "captain", the former Team Principal Mattia Binotto. In January, with the 2023 season upon us, the SF-23 project almost completed and a team to reassemble, Vasseur's arrival was born under big question marks: will he be up to it? How much will he be able to do in his first year of work and how will he reorganize the team?
Clearly, the men closest to Mattia Binotto would have been the first to be questioned and so it was. Replacing Rueda with Ravin Jain, in the strategic department, was the first major change imposed by Vasseur. But recently, another goodbye – that of the head of aerodynamics Sanchez – has shaken and worried the environment. And this is where the doubts about a bigger than "executioner" began to arise Vasseur, Deus Ex Machina, Ferrari top management.
Sanchez's departure
David Sanchez's resignation has opened up a more complex scenario than the simpler image of Vasseur making a clean sweep among the former Binotti supporters. The rumors, in fact, tell of a voluntary and unforced farewell. And here awareness: Ferrari is no longer that environment coveted by everyone but rather a place to be avoided, to ensure that one's career does not collapse with it. And the question: is there a culprit in all this? With the departure of Sanchez, which joins that of Binotto, SF-23 has lost two of its biological fathers. It is therefore difficult to think that the declarations made at the beginning of the year by Vasseur, on a Ferrari fighting for the title, could materialize.
In fact, the team must first untie all the knots that have come to a head, and understand what turn to give to this 2023, in which they, Leclerc and Sainz are always waiting on the track. On the choice of Sanchez's replacement, Ferrari is still being evaluated, but not having time to tap into a wider market, it will have to look in its own garden and choose internal resources. There is talk of Diego Tondi, current head of aerodynamic development, and Fabio Montecchi, Chief project engineer, as possible replacements.

Possible Vigna – Vasseur friction?
Ferrari started 2023 with a misstep, and at a clear disadvantage compared to Red Bull, both on the aerodynamic and reliability fronts. Vasseur, in all this is preparing to be a poor spectator, a victim of the power system in the Ferrari house, which put him in the place of Binotto, with whom the top management, Elkann and Vigna, were fully dissatisfied. According to what emerges from the pen of Fulvio Solms, on Corriere dello Sport, Vasseur, who operates with lower powers than the other Team Principals, would therefore have already entered into conflict with the management, in particular with the managing director of the team, Benedetto Vigna.
"The rift between Vasseur and the managing director Benedetto Vigna constitutes the true hypocenter of the ongoing earthquake – writes Solms – on behalf of the president John Elkann, Vigna has de facto commissioned Vasseur, who operates with powers inferior to those of the other nine of his peers in Formula 1.”
The friction between Vasseur and Vigna would therefore be attributable to the powers of the current Ferrari Team Principal. “To say: he has no control over team passes, which usually pertain to the team principal. Upon his arrival, he asked for the proxy on the sponsors and was denied: Vigna kept that too, which had taken it away from Binotto in March 2021. [...]. Binotto defended that autonomy and also defended his engineers when they were wrong [...], those who no longer feel protected take refuge within the confines of their homework in order not to run into a mistake that could cost them their job. Or, if he's appreciated, like David Sanchez, he gathers his stuff and says goodbye to the company. Attention: it is not true that Sanchez was pushed to leave".

A complicated scenario
What emerges from Solms' drawing is a system in which the hot heads are the first to jump. If one goes in search of one's own autonomy, putting up a wall and defending one's own work and that of colleagues as in the case of Binotto, one is kicked out, while the deserving either entrust themselves to the protection of the management by doing their homework, or do the bags and leave. A bit like what David Sanchez did.
Finally, again according to Solms, we could see another point of reference in the Maranello team come out the door: "That Laurent Mekies is looking for a house in Paris? "
A scenario from which, once again, only the image of the Cavallino comes out badly, forced after years of hard fasting to have to deal with an endless struggle between the powers and pressures of the media. A land in which it is not possible to cultivate anything, and in which every sprout is uprooted with violence, preventing it from growing and bearing the desired fruits.
Source statements: FormulaPassion