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For all intents and purposes, some irreverent comments From John Elkann The past week has brought a lot of turmoil in the complex world of the Scuderia ferrariAnd what is even more concrete, given the reaction it has generated, is that the interview with the Ferrari president had neither the intention, nor the objective, of anything desired,
To recap, following Ferrari’s victory at the World Endurance Championship (WEC) in Bahrain and, that same weekend, Ferrari’s double dnf At the Brazilian Grand Prix, Elkann praised Ferrari F1’s engineers and mechanics for improving the car in recent months and making faster pit stops. This in itself was suspicious. But then came the main soundbite.
“If we look at the rest, it is not right,” he said. said“And we definitely have drivers for whom it is important to concentrate on driving and talk less, because we still have important races ahead of us, and getting second place is not impossible,”
eh? It seemed almost too fantastical to be true. Was Elkann really calling? Lewis Hamilton And Charles Leclerc – The best driver lineup in the sport on paper – As for the team’s shortcomings this season? Isn’t it a worthless car, having been the fourth fastest car on the grid?
To their credit, with nine days to reflect, Hamilton and Leclerc didn’t react against their big boss ahead of this weekend’s Las Vegas Grand Prix. Hamilton said he had a “great relationship” with Elkann, who was undoubtedly a key player in the Britain swap. Mercedes Silver for Ferrari Red,
hamilton couple: “I wake up thinking about it [driving]I fall asleep thinking about it and I think about it even while sleeping, If anything, I need to focus on being able to unplug more,
Similarly, Leclerc revealed that he talks to Elkann weekly on the phone And did so after the disappointment in Brazil. “We talked about everything,” Leclerc said. “It also includes what he wanted to say. John wants to be creative and inspire the team to do better.”
Of course, we’ve been here before with Ferrari, but it’s never been as disappointing and frustrating as this year. After finishing second in the Constructors’ Championship last year, Hamilton signed a contract worth £50m per year. f1This is the biggest transfer ever fan Right at the start of the year, we were in a state of pre-season frenzy. Will 2025 be the year the title drought – stretching back to Kimi Raikkonen in 2007 – is broken?
Yet qualifying in race one is often the biggest truth teller. In Australia, Leclerc finished seventh, Hamilton eighth. By the end of A Crazy Grand Prix in Melbourne rainThose positions were changed to eighth and 10th respectively. It has barely budged in the months that followed.
Peaks have been few and far between: Hamilton’s Sprint victory in ChinaLeclerc’s pole position in Hungary. But in 21 Grands Prix, Ferrari have not won once and, more relevantly, they have not even been in contention.
Fred Vasseur – who, somewhat bizarrely, was given a new deal in July – and his organization are headed for their first winless year since 2021. Hamilton, in his 19th season in the sport, is on track for his first year without a podium finish. In fact, his last stage appearance was in Vegas last year. Elkann can criticize it as much as he wants, but Hamilton was right after the Brazilian: It really has been a “nightmare”.
And while Hamilton’s performance levels have been a notch or two below Leclerc’s – evidenced by the Monegasque’s seven podiums and 66 more points – the 40-year-old is not the first multiple world champion to fail within the strange recent workings of Ferrari’s F1 team.
Fernando Alonso (2010–2014) and Sebastian Vettel (2015–2020) both arrived at Ferrari in hopes of increasing their championship numbers, but amid a number of issues ranging from governance and leadership to raw speed and strategy mishaps, a title never materialized.
In fact, it’s notable that since Enzo Ferrari’s death in 1988, Ferrari has enjoyed only one sustained period of Formula 1 success, when the team was run by Jean Todt and Ross Brawn at the beginning of this century and was, understandably, very isolated from the rest of the business. Then Michael Schumacher was the beneficiary with five consecutive titles.
What does all this indicate? It’s just that failures – historic ones at that – cannot be laid at the feet of drivers sitting behind the wheel of a dysfunctional car in the cockpit. Instead, the microscope is to be applied to the 5,000-employee base in Maranello. The following year, a new set of rules provided a new opportunity for the Scuderia to get its act together.
McLaren, Mercedes and Red Bull have all won multiple grands prix this year, with Ferrari close behind. In search of answers, perhaps Alcan should look in the (rear-view) mirror instead of casting unnecessary shadows on the side of its star pair.