Ferrari will unveil its 2025 car in Maranello on January 19, the day after F1’s first official “season launch”, which will take place at the O2 in London.
Vasseur said Hamilton would no longer publicly engage with the team.
We have to be fully focused on the season,” he said. “It will be a very tense period between day one and launch and I want everyone to be fully focused on performance.
“We have the inauguration of the championship and the premiere of the car. These are two events and for me it’s way too much. Or, let’s say, far enough. I want to focus on development and performance, not on showing off.”
Vasseur spoke for the first time about his talks with Hamilton last winter that led to him joining Ferrari.
“We won more races than Mercedes in 2023, so it wasn’t difficult to convince him that Ferrari would be a good project,” he said.
“He had the project of driving for Ferrari in mind for at least 22 or 23 years, since we discussed it in 2004. It wasn’t too difficult.
“Sometimes it is also a matter of coincidence or the alignment of all the planets, that he is on the market, that Ferrari has a vacancy, etc. Contact was easy. We started talking a year ago and it wasn’t difficult to convince him.”
Ferrari lost the constructors’ championship to McLaren by 14 points in the final race of 2024, and Vasseur said he expected it to be another tight battle next season between the top four teams, including Red Bull and Mercedes.
“What we need to do to win next year is a matter of detail,” he said. “We have made significant improvements in every area, but we are still 14 points away from the championship. It’s a lot and almost nothing, it’s a DNF, a race incident, a strategic decision.
“We talk about the details of each pillar. Every mistake, every decision will have a huge impact. I’m sure next year’s championship will also be tight and we can’t let a single point slip away.”
