Why Ferrari won’t switch its development focus to F1 2027

Ferrari boss Fred Vasseur has ruled out switching the Formula 1 team’s development focus to 2027, despite its fading title hopes. 

Any chance of Ferrari seriously fighting for the drivers’ world championship appears to have been extinguished with Lewis Hamilton’s retirement from the Spanish Grand Prix leaving the seven-time world champion 101 points behind championship leader Andrea Kimi Antonelli. 

Antonelli claimed his eighth victory in 14 races this season in Madrid to further extend his advantage over his rivals as he remains on course to become F1’s youngest-ever world champion at just 20 years old. 

Ferrari’s prospects of winning the constructors’ championship isn’t looking much better, with the Scuderia 145 points adrift of Mercedes with nine scheduled races remaining. 

But that won’t stop Ferrari from continuing to develop its SF-26 challenger. 

“We are not in the situation of 12 months ago,” Vasseur explained. “Today, what we will develop, we will be able to carry it over on next year's project. 

“We will continue to work, but perhaps on different things, different aspects. The development that we do now, 80% will be carried over.”

While Hamilton has effectively conceded the 2026 F1 title battle to Antonelli, Vasseur has repeatedly refused to accept defeat when it comes to Ferrari’s championship chances this year. 

“Two or three weeks ago I told you that I will take race by race. I didn't change,” the Frenchman insisted. 

However, Vasseur acknowledged that Ferrari must improve its qualifying form if it is to have any hope of challenging Mercedes. 

“This we need to improve, because I think when you have a look on the pace, during the race the pace is there. For sure we need to do a better job in quali,” he said. 

“If you take Zandvoort and this one, the profile of the event is a little bit the same for us. We had a decent pace in quali, but we didn't put everything together on the last attempt, and race pace is OK.

“If I have to put the focus of the team on something today, it would be the evolution of the pace during the quali - more than the pace in quali, the evolution, the steps that you can do. We were there on run one Q3, the potential is there, we just have to adapt everything further on.”