The man linked most heavily with replacing under-fire Ferrari chief Mattia Binotto failed to dismiss speculation over that potential move.
Earlier this month reporters in Italy began to speak strongly in regards to Binotto's future. After a season in which F1's most famous marque flattered to deceive, there is now a significant amount of speculation that a new team boss could be installed to take advantage of Ferrari's strong technical position.
The team quickly moved to dismiss the speculation as "totally without foundation", but the feeling is the smoke is indeed indicative of a fire in this case. And the man most closely linked with Binotto's role, should it become vacant, is Frederic Vasseur.
The Frenchman is currently team principal at Alfa Romeo, the current guise of the Sauber team. But his future there is not certain, after it was confirmed that it will become Audi's works team when the German manufacturer enters F1 from 2026 – they may want to install their own man.
And the Italian press has claimed he is one of the front-runners to take over at Ferrari. Remarkably, when asked about the rumours at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix last Sunday, Vasseur gave a rather vague answer and failed to rule out such a move.
He told reporters: "I'm not going to say anything about it, you'll find out soon enough." That response gave the impression he feels he is, at the very least, in the running for the role – even if Binotto insists he is "relaxed" over his future with Ferrari.
The Italian said: "The reason why I'm relaxed is that I always have open, frank and constructive discussions with my bosses, with my chairman, not only on the short-term but on the medium and the long-term.
"If I look back at the season – yes, we had a few ups and downs, we are not the best yet, the fastest car on track – but I think we achieved our main objective, which was to be back, to be competitive in that new era of the 2022 cars.
"Yes, there are still a lot of things we need to progress, weaknesses have been shown, but we will try to address them. Everyone back at the factory is focused on 2023, trying to improve... I'm relaxed – more than that I'm really focused on what we need to do. I'm concentrated with the team."
