It was announced yesterday that Frederic Vasseur would be leaving Renault with immediate effect after only serving as the Formula One team's Principal for one season.
The news itself came out of the blue with no explanation from either the man or the team as to why Vasseur felt the need to leave, their statement only revealing that it was on good terms and a mutual agreement.
However, since then Vasseur has spoken to Motorsport.com about his reasons, explaining that it was simply due to differences of opinion about where the F1 team was headed and that would only result in hindering the team's chances of success in the pinnacle of Motorsports.
"There was too much different vision in the management of the team, so at this stage it makes sense for me to leave," he explained. "If you want to perform in F1, you need to have one leader in the team and one single way. If you have two different visions then the result is that the work inside the team is slow."
"We had a discussion straight after the end of last season, and we tried to find the best compromise and the best organisation for 2017. I took one or two weeks off and I made my decision in the first week of January. It is much better to stop right now.โ
After taking ART Grand Prix to multiple Championships in the GP2 and GP3 series before he made the move to Renault, Vassuer is still happy with the progress made during his one year there and has confirmed that the French based squad is about to employ some strong engineers in the coming weeks to help improve their on track performances.
โIt is a small frustration, but I have a positive feeling that together we did a good job on some points: in terms of recruitment, in terms of restructuring the company and also in track operations. We improved a lot over the past season and some strong engineers will join the team over the next few weeks and months.โ
He is somewhat frustrated by the situation, but is happy enough that he made the right decision to get out sooner rather than later.
โThe collaboration with the 1000 people who work for the team was a wonderful experience for me, because it is a real racing team. The frustration is like if you are building the foundations of a house and you stop after the first metre....But that is fine. I've made my decision".
