Why Ferrari boss Fred Vasseur is keen to shut down Lewis Hamilton F1 title talk

Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur has downplayed talk that Lewis Hamilton could win this year’s Formula 1 world championship following his breakthrough victory in Barcelona.

Hamilton took a spectacular first win with Ferrari at the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix in dominant fashion to come home nearly 20 seconds clear of George Russell.

The seven-time world champion had already moved up to second in the championship in Monaco but gained a further 25 points on Andrea Kimi Antonelli after the Mercedes driver retired from second place late on in Spain.

Hamilton being just 41 points behind Antonelli has sparked suggestions that what was believed to be an all-Mercedes fight for the title has now been blown wide open, but Vasseur is refusing to get carried away despite Ferrari’s impressive performance.

"I'm not sure that I want to reply to this kind of question," Vasseur replied when asked if Ferrari would fully back Hamilton if he were in a position to win a record-breaking eighth title.

"I had probably the same comments two weeks ago, that everything was a disaster - and now we are speaking about the world championship.

"This is the worst approach that I could have. The approach is to go to Austria exactly with the same approach that I had in Barcelona and not to think about the championship or to project yourself with 25 more wins, [or] what I could do. I will never do it.”

Hamilton’s 106th career victory marked his first win in nearly two years, and ended a similar drought for Ferrari.

“Internally for me it's a mega good feeling and we will celebrate at the factory because I think it's the reward of the job of 1,500 people,” Vasseur added.

“They are pushing very hard. When you are getting bad comments and we are pushing very hard. Sometimes it's tough at the factory that people are pushing like hell and they are not doing a better job when we are P1 than when we are P3 and the guys who are the producers are doing their best. For sure the result of today is the best reward that we can send to the factory and to the guys on the track.

“And we have to take it like this. But now I won't change the approach for the next one. I will try to continue to chase details and to bring performance everywhere and to do small step by small step.

“Let's enjoy on this one that we have two because that's the particularity of the job. Let's celebrate this one, let's enjoy. We will be back next week in Austria with the same approach as last time.”

Despite Ferrari’s strong weekend in Barcelona, Vasseur has urged caution surrounding the team’s competitiveness.

"It's not because you are doing a good weekend that you will blow up everybody every single weekend,” he stressed. "You know that the conditions were quite extreme. It was already the case in Canada for different reasons, but the opposite. Probably next race in Austria it will be something more average.

"We are all really on the edge for degradation. You can do a good stint and a bad stint with the same car on the same track.

"We had a difference between cars. If you compare the stint in medium and hard, some cars were much more performant in hard. Sometimes much more performant in medium. It's not a given for the rest of the season."