The recruitment handicap Ferrari face that Mercedes and Red Bull don’t

Ferrari being based in Italy creates extra difficulties in trying to poach staff from rival teams, according to Vasseur, who succeeded Mattia Binotto as team principal at the start of this year. 

"It's not the same situation - you can move from Red Bull to Mercedes, keep the same hours, keep children in the same school and from the Friday to the Monday you can change and everything is perfect,” Vasseur told Sky F1. 

"If you want to come to Italy, it's a different approach. You have to change the family environment and so on.

"But as soon as you are in Italy I think it's more difficult to leave - the food is much better and the quality of life in Italy is mega.

"Sometimes it can play into discussions because they have to move the family, it depends on the situation of the children, it's not always easy but as soon as we are able to attract someone they are staying.

"I had the same situation at Sauber, it was difficult to ask them to come but as soon as they were in Switzerland they stayed in Switzerland.”

Ferrari have lost several key members of personnel to other teams, with David Sanchez announced as joining McLaren in 2024 and Laurent Mekies set to become AlphaTauri’s new team principal. 

Vasseur admitted to being frustrated by the amount of time it takes to get the right people in place amid Ferrari’s ongoing quest to end their barren spell without an F1 title.

"I joined a couple of months ago, you need to understand what is the situation before you start to recruit,” he explained.  

"This process is a long one, they will join in 12 or 24 months and even the process of recruitment is not from one day to another, it means we are in the middle of this but it will arrive soon.

"Recruitment is where F1 is not agile at all.

"It means if you have a project, if you want to work with people, if you want to change the structure of a department - not speaking about Ferrari, in a general case - this takes months to understand what you want to do, to find the right people and then months or years to get them on board.

"It means sometimes you are speaking more about years than about races.

"Sometimes it can be frustrating because you are pushing like hell, I'm spending perhaps two thirds of my time on recruitment and we are signing contract for the end of 2024 in the best case scenario, maybe 2025."