FERARRI LOOKS FOR REVERSAL OF FORTUNE
Maybe it’s time to swap out the Prancing Horse with a groundhog — and not because the critters are a common sight during the Canadian Grand Prix at Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve.
No, this is more about the Groundhog Day-like movie that’s been playing out at the Italian stable, where everything looks like a repeat of the past — except, in this case, with no sign of a happy resolution.
The familiar script began during pre-season testing, where the red cars posted the quickest lap times and raised hopes among the long-suffering tifosi they would finally see the end of a championship drought that now extends over a decade.
Then came the start of real racing in Australia and the inevitable disappointment when things didn’t go as expected and the silver cars reached the finish line first and second, on cue, while Ferrari missed the podium altogether.
“Why are we so slow?” Sebastian Vettel lamented over the team radio, revealing not only disbelief within the team, but worse, a lack of understanding of what went wrong.
Next was Bahrain, and renewed hope. Charles Leclerc in the second Ferrari held a comfortable late lead — suggesting perhaps Oz was an aberration — until he cruelly suffered an engine problem with 10 laps to go to deny the youngster his first victory in F1. So bad luck this time. Or was it? Truth is, reliability is just as important as speed, and it’s up to mechanics and engineers — not the racing gods — to ensure their cars reach the finish line.
Another bad sign: Vettel was in prime position to inherit the win from his teammate in Bahrain, until he spun out of contention by an unforced driving error reminiscent of his many flubs last season.
Since then, there has been a familiar pattern of mistakes and mishaps at Ferrari, by both the team and the drivers, culminating in a comedy of errors at the last stop, in Monaco.
There, the team’s brain trust ruined Leclerc’s weekend with an inexcusable strategic miscalculation that put a premature end to his qualifying session, while Vettel needed no help making life difficult for himself by running into the barriers multiple times.
As for the performance of the cars themselves, whatever advantage Ferrari might have held at the outset seems to have disappeared for reasons the team itself is at pains to explain.
“Is it maybe even the car concept?” team boss Mattia Binotto said last month, suggesting Ferrari might have got things wrong at the drawing board — a stunning admission of a possible design flaw for which a quick fix is doubtful.
One year ago, Vettel scored his 50th career F1 win and the first by Ferrari in Montreal since
2004, giving him the lead in the drivers’ championship and hope to tifosi around the world.
Then the wheels fell off and it was Groundhog Day all over again.