Team principal Fred Vasseur knows that he needs to find a way to make Ferrari more competitive sooner rather than later.

After 10 race weekends, Ferrari sit third in the Formula 1 constructors’ championship.

On paper, it’s not a disastrous position for Fred Vasseur’s team to be in, but the gap to leader McLaren has already grown to 191 points.

Charles Leclerc could make an argument that he was the most in-form driver on the grid at the end of last season, but simply hasn’t had a car capable of competing to that level this year.

In the other garage, Lewis Hamilton hasn’t had the start to life as a Ferrari driver that he would have dreamed of.

Hamilton has spent all season voicing his concerns on the team radio to his new race engineer, and Leclerc hasn’t been shy about sharing his issues either.

Ultimately, Vasseur is the man who has to take responsibility for Ferrari’s underperformance this season.

Vasseur’s job is under pressure at Ferrari, and one of the men he needs to impress is the team’s chairman, John Elkann.

Elkann hasn’t leapt to the defence of Vasseur after the Italian media suggested he was under pressure, and journalist Ralf Bach has a theory about why that might be the case.

Photo by Mark Sutton – Formula 1/Formula 1 via Getty Images

John Elkann didn’t stop Fred Vasseur’s Ferrari exit rumours from emerging

Bach was responding on F1 Insider’s YouTube channel to rumours that Vasseur’s job is at risk at Ferrari and revealed an interesting theory.

He said: “I think he has a real problem.

“Normally, you don’t have to take every story that circulates on the internet seriously, but in this case, if you know the background at Ferrari and the politics at Fiat.

“Corriere della Sera and Gazzetta dello Sport released this story almost at the same time, that something was happening, that there were already other candidates as replacements and that the big Fiat boss and Ferrari president John Elkann is already talking to people who could and would have been a replacement.

“If it hadn’t been for these two newspapers, you would say, yes, these are only rumours.

“But from my own experiences, I know that Fiat is also a shareholder in the publishing house that publishes these newspapers.

“That means that if they write a story like that, they must check with the publisher.

“The publisher will then talk to John Elkann, who wants to do this and that, what do you think, and it’s like a blessing.

“That’s the problem, that it could mean something. I’m quite sure that Elkann found out about this story beforehand and didn’t stop it.

“The message is that he’s under pressure, he is being watched by John Elkann, who is looking for a successor but is not quite there yet, but it is the beginning of the end, you could say.”

Fred Vasseur leaps to the defence of key Ferrari ally amid job speculation

Vasseur spent much of the Canadian Grand Prix defending his Ferrari staff, with the pressure increasing as the gap continues to grow to the likes of McLaren and Mercedes.

Ferrari have clearly failed to build on the progress they made in 2024 when they were so close to winning the constructors’ championship.

However, the difficulty Ferrari faced was the changing faces leading the technical program at Maranello.

Loic Serra has arrived from Mercedes to replace Enrico Cardile ahead of his move to Aston Martin, but in the meantime, Vasseur was both team principal and technical director.

Vasseur was left ‘irked’ at suggestions he wanted to replace Diego Tondi with Enrico Balbo from Red Bull as his head of aerodynamics.

It’s admirable that he wants to defend his current staff, but something needs to change at Ferrari soon, otherwise it will be Vasseur who finds himself looking for a new job in the paddock.