15 Years: Ferrari’s long and continuous wait for their first F1 title.
It’s the summer break, and Ferrari is back. In true Italian fashion, the Maranello-based manufacturer has once again completely dropped the ball on a championship. It has been 15 years since Ferrari last won a driver’s championship, with Kimi Räikkönen snatching the championship from two-time champion Fernando Alonso and rookie (now seven-time world champion) Lewis Hamilton. Ferrari has had quite a few opportunities over the years to win a championship. In 2010, they lost the championship to RedBull’s Sebastian Vettel by just four points in the final race of the season. In 2012, they once again lost to RedBull’s Sebastian Vettel in the final race of the season, who drove a stellar race in a severely damaged RedBull to claim his then-third title by just four points again. In 2017, Ferrari tasked Sebastian Vettel with winning a championship in a car that was plagued by reliability woes. However, not even the four-time world champ could outdrive Ferrari’s failures, losing out to Mercedes. In 2018, Sebastian Vettel lost his lead in the championship to Lewis Hamilton by crashing out in the German Grand Prix, unfortunately never regaining the lead. This takes us to Ferrari’s most recent challenge for the title, the 2022 season. Where do we begin? Poor strategy, reliability, unforced errors? Charles Leclerc is so far behind title leader and defending champion Max Verstappen that he could not show up to the next four races and still lead the drivers’ championship. Let’s start with strategy. The Ferrari pit wall is what the Italians call a disaster. Take the last race weekend in Hungary. Leclerc is in second place and on the medium tires. Leclerc is happy to continue and voices these thoughts to the pit wall. Unexpectedly, however, just a few laps later, Leclerc is told to box and come in for the hard tires. At this point, commentators David Crofty and Martin Brundle are screaming at the Ferrari garage. The Alpine crew had swapped on the hards and became instantly slower, completely unable to get temperature into the tires. Down at the Haas garage, it was the same story. RedBull and Mercedes saw this and chose to stick to the medium and soft tires. Ferrari, it is safe to assume, was not watching the same race as us. They took one look at the others on hards, saw them struggling, and just turned a blind eye. The moment Charles switched onto the hards, it was immediately obvious Ferrari had mucked up. Leclerc ended up finishing down in P6 behind not only his main title rival Verstappen but crucially the two closest drivers to him. Sergio Perez, Max Verstappen’s teammate at RedBull, is now just five points behind Leclerc. George Russell, crucially, is just twenty points down from Charles Leclerc. This is just one Ferrari engine problem away from being level on points. Speaking of Ferrari engine problems, Ferrari seems to be a proud example of the Italian car’s lack of reliability. I think the most spectacular showing of Ferrari reliability this year came with Carlos Sainz at the Austrian Grand Prix. While hunting down Verstappen for second place, Carlos Sainz began to lose power. The rear end of the car began shaking violently before bursting into flames. Seemingly out of nowhere, the entire engine “grenaded” and was almost immediately deemed a complete loss. In the 12 years I’ve watched Formula 1, never have I seen an engine grenade in such fashion. And this has become a regular occurrence with Ferrari happening multiple times throughout the season. Of course, other teams have had their fair share of reliability issues, most notably RedBull, with Verstappen having retired from two of the first three races. However, these reliability issues were not paired with poor strategy calls and mistakes from Verstappen. As a matter of fact, Max Verstappen has been almost flawless this entire season, with a going-off in Barcelona and a 360 in Hungary being the two incidents I can recall. Despite those incidents, he went on to win both races. Ferrari has a lot to think about over this summer break. Reliability woes, strategy errors, and much more. The team needs to step up their game if they want to return to their championship-winning form from 2007, 15 years ago.
