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As the legendary Ferrari team continues its march to mediocrity, or at least the back half of the Formula 1 grid, many people smile.
After all, many sports fans like it when Goliath suffers a fall every now and then. Ferrari’s current track is like watching the New York Yankees for eleven seasons after winning their last World Series (incredible, the San Francisco Giants have won three championships since then and even the small-market Kansas City Royals one title).
Sebastian Vettel can’t ride his bike fast enough to escape the problems at Ferrari.
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Ferrari’s troubles rival those of another team in red – the Boston Red Sox of baseball – that currently ranks bottom in the American League East after winning the World Series itself in 2013 and 2018.
Ferrari may not finish last, but it falls into a depth that the team hasn’t seen since the early 1980s. The last time the team finished under fourth place in the Formula 1 constructors’ championship in 1981, it was sixth.
After the F1 Tuscan Grand Prix last Sunday, Ferrari team boss Mattia Binotto had less than encouraging words for the Ferrari Tifosi (these are super fans, folks). In this race Charles LeClerc finished eighth and Sebastian Vettel tenth for Ferrari. You could say decent enough to take into account that we only end up driving 12 cars because of all the carnage that resulted not only from an incident on the first lap of the race but also from three restarts – one from behind the safety Car and two stationary vehicles restart after accidents after red flags.
The only two cars to finish the race on the track but outside the points and behind Vettel at Mugello were the unfortunate Williams and Haas.
It wasn’t exactly the 1000th Ferrari race in the Formula 1 party that team boss Binotto (or frankly F1) had imagined when everything lined up (thanks, coronavirus) to make the 1000th race on Ferrari’s home track in Land Mugello.
Team boss Mattia Binotto seeks help wherever he can get it.
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“A very disappointing result ends a historic weekend for Scuderia Ferrari on our home track Mugello with our 1000th Formula 1 Grand Prix,” said Binotto this week on the Ferrari F1 website. “(In qualifying) At least with Charles we managed to get a result that met our expectations. (On race day) we didn’t have the pace to allow our drivers to fight their closest rivals, especially under tire degradation suffers. ” “”
Now the bad news for Ferrari fans. Even the team boss doesn’t expect much from a turnaround for the rest of the season. And with no major changes to the regulations planned in Formula 1 until 2022, it might be time to leave the red shirts in the closet for a while.
“Both Charles and Sebastian did their best given the level of performance of the car,” said Binotto. “We’re working hard to fix the basic bugs, but it won’t be possible in a short amount of time or with a few updates.
“That doesn’t mean we won’t bring any new solutions until the end of the season, but we have to be realistic with ourselves and our fans.”
If someone smiles under the face mask in the Ferrari garage these days, it could be Vettel. After all, he’s out there at the end of the season. It wasn’t too long ago that the F1 world wondered if Vettel would be ready to get on the grid and drive for a mid-pack team in order to stay in the sport after leaving Ferrari.
It turns out that Vettel continues to go up. While Ferrari is in sixth place in the team standings, Vettel’s 2021 outfit is fourth at Racing Point (next year it’s Aston Martin) and breathes McLaren’s neck for third place in the F1 battle for the “best of the rest” behind the, what right now is a two-team club from Mercedes and Red Bull.
“The positive thing is that we were able to land in the points, but of course we can not be satisfied with our position,” said Vettel on Sunday.
No, the positive is that you, Mr. Vettel, will have a real fresh start next year. We know you smile behind this face mask.
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