Nico Rosberg urges Ferrari to copy rival in F1 transfer battle

Michelle Foster 24 Jul 2023 4:30 PM

The updated Ferrari front wing. Austria June 2023.

After a disappointing Hungarian GP, Nico Rosberg says the time has come for Fred Vasseur to raid rival teams for their top talent as that’s the only way to “really move Ferrari forward”.

11 races into this season and Ferrari, having been Red Bull’s closest competitors last season, have fallen to fourth in the pecking order with McLaren and Mercedes moving ahead.

而兰多诺里斯在t台上he last two races, P2 at the British Grand Prix and again in Hungary, Lewis Hamilton was P3 at Silverstone and missed out on a second successive podium by less than two seconds in Budapest having started the race from pole position.

‘It’s time for Ferrari to try and do something similar’

As for Ferrari, Carlos Sainz didn’t make it out of Q2 on Saturday while the team-mates were seventh and eighth in the grand prix with Charles Leclerc ahead.

Scoring just 10 points to McLaren’s 28, the Woking team has slashed Ferrari’s advantage in the race for fourth in the standings from over 100 points to just 80. And McLaren show no signs of slowing down.

It has Rosberg suggesting it’s time for Ferrari to seek expertise from rival teams, much in the same way Aston Martin brought in Dan Fallows from Red Bull and immediately shot up the timesheets.

He told Sky F1: “I think what Fred Vasseur needs to do now is poach some talent from the other best teams. Some very key talent. I think that he needs to get done to really move Ferrari forward.”

“I would like to see Fred now try and go for those talents, like Aston Martin did poaching the chief aerodynamicist there from Red Bull and that’s enabled them to make a huge jump.

“And it’s time for Ferrari to try and do something similar.”

Earlier this season Ferrari did make a play for Red Bull’s technical director Pierre Wache but were rebuffed with the Frenchman going on to sign a new deal with the reigning World Champions.

More recently the Scuderia turned their attention to Mercedes,signing the Brackley squad’s performance director Loïc Serra. That has yet to be confirmed by either Mercedes or Ferrari.

Rosberg meanwhile, believes Ferrari had a worse weekend in Hungary than what they expected with Leclerc and Sainz only seventh and eighth on a track that Ferrari expected to suit their SF-23.

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“They were expecting to be going really well here in the slow corners, and it’s just been the opposite. So they were very surprised,” he revealed.

Sainz concedes that was not what Ferrari had hoped for.

“It’s clear that right now we are not where we want to be in terms of race pace, in terms of everything really – tyre deg, pace, even one-lap this weekend hasn’t been our strength either,” he told Sky Sports F1.

“So clearly some homework to do to understand why at a track where we expected maybe to be a bit stronger than we were, we were not. And I’m sure we’ll try to make a step in Spa in understand, and if not, we will take the summer break to analyse everything and put together a better package for the other half.

“It is what it is. I don’t care about Charles, or seventh or eighth. I just care about Russell being 1.5s quicker at the end of his stint.”