Ferrari slump could continue well into 2022
The timing couldn't have been worse for the Tifosi. After a brutal weekend at Spa, Ferrari finds itself at The Cathedral of Speed. Home soil. But the expectations have never been lower.
I can imagine the face masks provided somewhat of a disguise, but it was obvious that the expression on the faces of Sebastian Vettel and Charles Leclerc was anything but happy after a tough weekend at Spa-Francorchamps. Struggling through practice, just limping into Q2 on Saturday and just basically sitting duck on Sunday.
Yes, it looked bad. Team principal Mattia Binotto stressed in great lengths that this was just ‘a track related issue’. But looking at the data, it shows that the performance of the Scuderia wasn’t particular worse in Belgium than other weekends. They where actually closer to pole than before. And that makes it even worse.
Perfect storm
Last weekend, it just all seemed to come together in a perfect storm for Ferrari. One that the team is mainly responsible for itself. The Scuderia is obviously off the pace, with a 4th place qualification as the best result this year. In no comparison with the 9 poles the team scored in 2019.
Ferrari was only able to just fight themselves into Q2 and then went up going 13th and 14th. It’s a painful to see, even for neutral fans of the sport. But as always, with a little hindsight it’s easy to explain.
Binotto isn’t wrong when he says that a circuit like Spa requires a specific setup. It’s a notoriously low drag circuit, with most of the teams running with the lowest possible downforce settings. It’s also a track that’s more than 70% full throttle, so performance of the power unit is of great importance as well.
Unfortunately, Ferrari finds itself stuck with a high drag car and a power unit lacking power.
So while Ferrari was closer to the pole postion at Spa percentage-wise (+1.6%) than Hungary (+1.8%), Spain (+1.8%) or even Silverstone 2 (+1.7%), it found itself further down the ranks. Other teams could benefit from Spa’s uniqueness, where Ferrari had to suffer through.
Monza is arguably an even higher speed track than Spa and it’s followed by Mugello, a circuit that shares characteristics with Spa. It’s looking like a tough few races for fans of the Scuderia. Not to mention Bahrain Outer and even Turkey later this year.
To add injury to insult: the Netflix-crew is filming at Ferrari this weekend and perhaps next week for their 1000th GP as well.
Big changes
It’s pretty obvious something bigger is at play here. The overall deficit of Ferrari to other teams but also its own performance in 2018 and 2019 is too big to blame on track specifics only.
Usually, the design and development of a F1 car takes somewhere between 9-12 months. Which means Ferrari was well underway with the current SF1000 based on the 2018-2019 data when the FIA published their Technical Directive regarding the fuel flow in November last year.
Now, since the FIA and Ferrari struck a secret deal on their 2019 engine, we’re down to a bit speculation here, but it seems that the design of the SF1000 is leaning heavily on the use of a power unit that is no longer there.
With the regulations and development pretty much frozen for next season, apart from some changes that may be made based on development ‘tokens’, it’s no surprise Ferrari is keeping its foot down in the dispute around the Racing Point RP20.
And then there is the resurgence of the rumour that Ferrari would like to get former Mercedes engine guru Andy Cowell on board, of course. After Cowell’s departure from Mercedes in June he was first approached by the Scuderia, but turned down their offer. This week, rumours surfaced that Ferrari would make a new offer to the Briton and even reorganised the team to free some extra budget.
If Cowell would come to terms with Ferrari, it would be a new addition to a long list of British engineers that helped the Italian manufacturer to success.
Even with its proud Italian roots and heritage, Ferrari has always had a strong link with British motorsport knowledge.
Harvey Postlethwaite, John Barnard, Steve Nichols, Ross Brawn and James Allison all had important roles at the Scuderia since the 1980’s up to 2016.
Gap year
Earlier this season, Ferrari chairman John Elkann already said that he didn’t expect that his F1 team would be competitive before 2022. For many fans it’s okay if 2021 turns out to be a gap year in which the team sets out a new path to success with a new driver lineup.
But his team principal, Mattia Binotto put it in a little bit more realistic perspective. When questioned how low he thinks it’s going to take to get Ferrari back in championship contending form, he replied: “How long it will take? I think that if you look back at all the winning cycles it is always many years”.
The data agrees, the Scuderia was winning World Championships from 1961 to 1964, 1975 to 1979, 1982 and 1983, 1999 to 2004 and in 2007 and 2008. Let’s not forget, the Italian team still has the records for most Driver’ and Constructor’ championships.
Binotto added that “there are no silver bullets in F1”, a statement we also heard from Toto Wolff earlier this year. A little further down the pitlane, Claire Williams can testify just how hard it can be to get back to the top.
On to Monza for now! Unfortunately for Ferrari, the first practice sessions didn’t look very promising.
On the bright side: the weather looks a lot better than when we visited the track back in July, so let’s hope for a great raceweekend otherwise.
Cheers,
Johan
📑 The Debrief
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