Vasser: It’s too early to talk about winning the championship

Ferrari’s winning double yesterday gave fans of the Italian team hope, although the Australian Grand Prix was won by Carlos Sainz, who still has 21 races left for the Scuderia and with whom he will sign a contract for next season is still unknown is.

But there is no doubt he will sign, and with a strong team, and after last weekend’s events, Carlos’ shares soared. The Italian press is now also writing enthusiastically about Frederic Vasseur, the head of the Ferrari team, although this is only the second victory that the Scuderia has achieved during its work in Maranello.

To quote Gazzetta dello Sport: “We must pay tribute to the people of Maranello for their work – starting with Fred Vasseur, who is starting to show his character a year after joining the team. This is the character of a driver who prefers specific details rather than overly optimistic promises, who is very careful in choosing what needs to be done to make the team work, but who is always smiling.

But whatever impression he makes, the external side only matters to a certain extent. Only the results are important. Point”.

This is how Vasser himself responded to the results of yesterday’s race: “Could we have won the winning double if Verstappen’s car had not had problems with the brakes? I don’t know and no one knows. If we compare our pace to Perez’s, it looks like we can still win, but we don’t know.

And now we have to enjoy our success, because there are still 21 races ahead of us when we have to fight with Max.

We showed good pace from the start of the weekend. It was one of the best weekends of the past fifteen months. Work has continued steadily since Friday and continued on Sunday. We showed the best lap of the race and now, based on the experience we gained in Melbourne, we have to build on our work throughout the season.

If everything goes well from day one, this is very important because then you can concentrate on the nuances. Compared to last year, the big difference is that the characteristics of the SF-24 are clearer to both us and the racers. This is a more correct foundation on which we can build further. Therefore, we are able to achieve greater consistency and improvements throughout the weekend.

We still have some work to do, but all the other teams are in the same position. And although this weekend was very successful, in Suzuka we will have to start all over again, and there are no guarantees that we will always achieve such success. We must continue to work according to the approach we have chosen and not think about what we have already achieved.

Will we be able to fight for championship victory? It’s too early to talk about this. We have taken an important step forward, but there is no point in even drawing conclusions yet.

Carlos and Charles have been pushing each other since the start of the season and this has motivated the whole team. They interact very intelligently with each other on the court, for example when we ask them to change positions. But in Melbourne everything went perfectly, from the first to the last lap.

I would like to congratulate the entire team, because the winning double is a reward for the excellent work that started last year and that continues both on the race circuits and at the base in Maranello.

Carlos of course deserves a special mention, because just two weeks ago he underwent surgery. But it feels like none of this happened as he managed to maintain maximum concentration throughout this sensational weekend.

Charles also performed quite confidently, although he did have problems with the tires after the far from ideal qualifying in the race, but thanks to the speed of the car he still managed to win back. He had a great first and last stint and also recorded the best lap of the race, which confirms the progress we have made with the tyres.

The results we showed in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia did not upset us, but even now we do not allow ourselves to overestimate the significance of this victorious double. In this spirit we must continue to work in the coming phases of the season, as this is the only way to achieve the desired results.”