New Ferrari boss Fred Vasseur says winning the Formula 1 title is an “obvious target” in 2023 as aiming for anything less would show a “lack of ambition”.

Vasseur left his role as head of Sauber’s F1 team to take over at Ferrari following Mattia Binotto’s departure last December.

His appointment comes off the back of Ferrari’s failure to end its wait for an F1 world championship that stretches back to 2008 last season, despite ending a two-year spell without a victory.

A series of factors, including strategy errors and poor reliability, contributed in Ferrari’s downfall through the year, with the Italian outfit losing ground to Red Bull in the title battle.

While there have been calls for widespread changes to be made at Ferrari over the winter, Vasseur dispelled such suggestions, believing it already has everything in place to win again.

Speaking in his first address to the media since joining Ferrari, Vasseur said, as quoted by Motorsport.com: “I’m really convinced that Ferrari today, and, for sure, my experience is limited to the last two weeks, but we have everything to win.

“We have to put everything together to do a good job, but we have everything to be able to win.

“You can have a look on the results of the last decades that the wheel is always running, and it’s just a matter of continuous improvement for me.

“If we are doing a better job than the others in a couple of months or years, then we will be able to win. Nothing is set in stone. If you have a look at some teams that were in a very dominant situation a couple of years ago, they are nowhere today.

“It means that you don’t have to take this kind of direction to say OK, it was like these last decades or the last 20 years, and it will stay like this the next 40 years.

“F1 is a changing world and we just have to be focused on the job, on the performance, and everything is possible.”

Ferrari finished as runner-up to Red Bull in last year’s constructors’ championship – its best finish since 2019 – but CEO Benedetto Vigna has ramped up pressure on the Scuderia to go one better.

Asked if Vigna’s claim that second is “first of the losers” was extra pressure to succeed, Vasseur said: “When you are in a top team, you can’t have another target than the win.

“You can’t start the season to say, ‘OK I would be happy with P2.’ It would be a lack of ambition. I think we have everything to do a good job, and the target has to be to win.”