KV 'dynamics' hampered F1 aspirant Simona de Silvestro in IndyCar

The Swiss moved across to KV alongside Tony Kanaan last year after three difficult years with the single-car HVM team; her final year with the squad being further compromised by the uncompetitive Lotus engine.

The move to KV brought flashes of speed and a career-first podium in Houston, but the rest of her season was spiked with inconsistency.

She left IndyCar at the end of the season to take up a test and development role with Sauber in Formula 1.

Vasser said that strong intra-team communication was a key part of Ganassi's success during his stint with the squad alongside Alex Zanardi in the 1990s, but de Silvestro's problems - for which she was largely not at fault - exemplified the difficulty in replicating a similarly open environment.

"The dynamic we had last year wasn't the best for the team or for Simona," Vasser told AUTOSPORT.

"She is a fantastic driver and we'd hoped that things would have been better last year.

"In a sense this year has been a rebuilding exercise in trying to bring the two sides together better as one team. And it's still difficult.

"I can sit here and tell you what happened at Ganassi in those years, and I felt like I was a part of making that happen. But it's so difficult to make happen. I can't wave my wand and say, 'boys, this is what you've gotta do'.

"It's so hard to do that, especially from outside the car. It's got to come from the pilots, and they set the example for the whole team."

STRONGER IN 2014

KV signed Dragon Racing's 2013 line-up of Sebastien Bourdais and Sebastien Saavedra during the off-season, and while Vasser believes that the team is still yet to compensate for Kanaan's touch on ovals, it has become stronger elsewhere.

"With Tony we were certainly more in the fight in the ovals," he said. "We found that Bourdais and Saavedra didn't really like Tony's Indy 500 car [set-up], but Townsend Bell ran it and had it up to second place.

"But certainly I think we've raised the bar on our street and road performance. We've taken quite a different approach from an engineering standpoint, and that's just from letting Bourdais steer the ship with the engineers - let the inmates run the asylum.

"And I've got a lot of respect for Saaevdra. He's very talented; the speed is there, it's just that we've had a hard time getting consistency out of that team."

Saavedra took a breakthrough pole for the Indianapolis road course race, while Bourdais has been a regular frontrunner on road and street courses this year, although assorted problems have frequently limited his results.