F1, Ferrari: for Maranello team it is no longer enough to just get by
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Ferrari’s recent F1 seasons have been full of ups and downs. To be honest, the exciting moments are far fewer than the negative ones, which is why every victory of the Prancing Horse is celebrated almost like a miracle by its fans and beyond. When a red car wins, the emotion is special, especially in unique circumstances like Monaco or Monza.
Charles Leclerc’s two victories in 2024 at these circuits, along with Carlos Sainz’s heroic success in Melbourne, which came just a few weeks after his appendix surgery, have certainly been a strong sign of a resurgence after a disastrous 2023 for the Prancing Horse team. They were also the only ones to break Max Verstappen and Red Bull's winning streak with Carlos Sainz's victory last year in Singapore.
The legacy left by Mattia Binotto to Frederic Vasseur was truly poor: a car, the SF-23, full of problems, unreliable, slow, undrivable. Practically a reject from the company, a water heater on four wheels that barely finished a race without a technical problem. The work has been massive, starting with the update in Barcelona and leading to what is now the SF-24, competitive and even capable of winning some races, as well as competing with McLaren on equal terms, as seen in Baku.
Ferrari has rarely been in a real fight for the F1 world title in the past two decades: since the Maranello team was last on top of the world in 2007 for the drivers' championship and 2008 for the constructors', you can count on one hand the times Ferrari has been a serious contender.
Apart from 2010 and 2012, lost for deeply different reasons, we have to jump several years to 2017: after a couple of technical regulation changes, the SF70-H set a standard, competing more or less equally with the dominant Mercedes in the first part of the season, only for everything to fall apart, especially in the Asian rounds of Singapore, Malaysia, and Japan.
The following year, in 2018, probably the biggest regret was not seeing the red car fight for the F1 world championship until the final race, something it fully deserved. However, there were two small but significant problems: Vettel mentally lost the championship in that Motodrom wall at Hockenheim, and the SF71-H, a worthy successor to the previous year's car, lost its edge from Singapore onward.
After that, Ferrari spent more years just getting by, with a secret agreement with the FIA after the 2019 car's engine was found, in some way, not entirely legal, effectively leading to an on-track disqualification, considering the embarrassing performance in 2020. Only in 2021 did Ferrari show signs of recovery, but by then, all energies were focused on 2022, the year in which Charles Leclerc was in the title fight at least until the summer. But between some not-so-reasonable decisions by Mattia Binotto and a car that was weak in terms of reliability and updates, everything went up in smoke.
In summary, looking at the big picture, it's hard to say that Ferrari has been excellent in the last 16 years, since it's always been the others who have won. Besides the harsh numbers, this was also pointed out by a familiar face of the Prancing Horse, Rob Smedley, the historic race engineer of Felipe Massa, who became famous for that "Fernando is faster than you" radio message during the 2010 race in Hockenheim when the Brazilian was leading ahead of his new teammate Alonso.
"I don't want to speak badly about Ferrari because I have great passion for them and much respect for Fred, but I have to admit they have been a bit below my expectations," said Smedley. "At the beginning of the season, I thought they were on a stronger growth trajectory, and I'd like to see them make great progress. The positive note is that they are now working in a more organized way."
"If we look back a few years, to be honest, the situation on track was really bad; they were making many mistakes typical of a lower-ranked team. Under Fred's leadership and with the ongoing rebuild, they are improving on that front, although they still show some signs of inconsistency," concluded the engineer.
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