The paddock had not yet reached Sepang when Ferrari made its move. On Tuesday morning, a Ferrari spokeswoman gathered a small group of reporters for a hastily arranged briefing with one purpose: to draw a line under the speculation that had trailed Fred Vasseur out of Baku.

“Ferrari’s position is clear and unchanged. Ferrari has made its choices and has full confidence in the leadership of Fred Vasseur and his team and we will continue to do so,” the spokeswoman told the call.

She then gave away the reason for the timing.

“Ferrari has always attracted interest, it’s a reflection of what Ferrari represents. We say this today because we want to avoid gossip and speculation in Malaysia and focus on the weekend.”

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Ferrari almost never publicly defends a sitting team principal. Doing it before the paddock touches down at Sepang is a measure of how loud the noise around Vasseur had become.

The Baku line that framed the week

The trigger was Christian Horner’s interview with The Times, in which the former Red Bull team principal described Ferrari as “the dream” and, per The Race’s summary, “arguably the sleeping giant of F1”, the only team he said he would return to the pit wall for without an ownership stake. Cornered on the same subject after every session of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, Vasseur made no attempt to hide his irritation.

“We are not working in the perfect serenity,” he said in Baku.

“Mr Horner is looking for a job, that everybody knows, everywhere. But what can I do? Just try to do my best to push the team.”

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“Each interview, 25 times a day, we are coming back to this,” he added.

Vasseur signed a multi-year extension with Ferrari in July 2025. Ferrari’s position, publicly, is that the choice has been made.

A tactic with an awkward history

Whether Tuesday’s intervention closes the story or feeds it is the question the paddock will bring to Sepang. Public “full confidence” statements from boards and chairmen have a habit of preceding the exit they were meant to head off, an irony that has never quite gone away in Formula 1. Jon Noble wrote for The Race that going public can just as easily hand the speculation more oxygen as put it out.

Ferrari themselves are alive to that risk. The briefing was pushed out on Tuesday morning, before the Sepang cameras switched on, and framed at “external” audiences rather than the team.

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The Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia runs at Sepang International Circuit this weekend (2-4 October), with the race hosted at Sepang after Bahrain gave up its 2026 slot. Ferrari will attempt to redirect the conversation to the car for the first time in a fortnight.

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