Former Haas team principal Guenther Steiner believes that Fred Vasseur will need to make some ‘hard decisions’ between Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton as the duo navigate their first season as Ferrari team-mates. Hamilton arrives in Maranello with the ambition of restoring Ferrari to their former glory and adding an eighth Drivers’ Championship title to his collection.
Leclerc, meanwhile, has been the Scuderia’s leading man since toppling Sebastian Vettel and has been patiently waiting for his own chance to win an F1 crown. As things stand, the two team-mates have an exemplary relationship and have been working in harmony during the off-season to help Ferrari maximise their performance from a radically overhauled design concept in the SF-25.
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“Both of these drivers they drove for Fred’s F2 and F3 teams, Lewis and Charles,” Steiner told CNN. “So he has got good relationships in person. That’s for both of them. They have respect for Fred because, without Fred, they wouldn’t be where they are. So that is a good place to be.”
The former Haas boss continued: “Obviously, there will be times when Fred needs to take hard decisions. But I don’t think he is afraid of it. I think he put himself in having these two drivers in a good position to win a championship.”
One only has to look to Hamilton’s past to understand the perils of having two competitive team-mates vying for World Championships. Relationships strained between the Brit and Fernando Alonso during the early days of his career with McLaren, and the same happened with Nico Rosberg when Mercedes dominated the turbo-hybrid era.
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Despite the possibility of fireworks, team principal Vasseur believes that internal competition could be what Ferrari need to take the next step. “Well, it’s always an opportunity and one of the skills of the driver is to try to always improve,” he said.
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“A good way to improve is also to take the experience or the performance of your team-mate, because it’s the driver that is the closest to you and you can have access to the data that you can work with. If you are clever, you can do a step with the potential of your team-mate.
“I’m fully, fully sure, because we already did two TPC (Testing of Previous Cars) and the shakedown today, that it will be the case. Honestly, I’m not scared at all with this, because we need to have this kind of emulation.
“I spoke about it last year between Charles and Carlos [Sainz]. It was already the case, but as a team, if we want to perform, we need to have two drivers performing. We need to have two drivers in a kind of competition, a positive competition and a positive emulation. And I’m sure that it will be the case.”
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