“When you go to Ferrari, and you see the facilities, the test track and everything else, you wonder how they ever manage to lose a race. Then over time you see all the politics and intrigue, and you wonder how they ever manage to win one…”
So said Gilles Villeneuve. And he’s not wrong. But still it seems we struggle to learn as much.
Mention Ferrari and plenty of things come to mind. Passion not least. Heritage no doubt. F1’s most evocative name, perhaps by far. But other things too. Resources. Vast potential. And success, or at least the expectation of it.
But scratch the surface and other less pleasant things emerge alongside. Underachievement. False dawns. And following that rancour. Upheaval. And debilitation.
And we’re just now having our latest reminder. While it seems from another age, at the outset of this season many of us were convinced that Ferrari would give Mercedes plenty to think about. The Italian team had in 2015 strode back decisively and astonishingly after a difficult 2014. The Scuderia looked sharp, confident and always able to irritate the Mercs and seize opportunities when they were presented. Three race wins were the reward. And, we thought, another bound of similar size this season and we’d have a title fight.
We thought too that its new recruit Sebastian Vettel – who was equally impressive in his own concurrent 2015 bounce back – must have some kind of charmed existence. The mutter in advance from Seb’s old foe Mark Webber sounded highly prophetic: “you know what, mate? It'll be just his luck to go to Ferrari when they have one of their golden periods…” Little wonder Seb that campaign grinned like a Cheshire Cat – this particular cat had landed on his feet yet again.
“Ah, but then – sooner or later – reality starts to get a toehold” noted an observing Nigel Roebuck just after Seb had rocked up at Ferrari at the start of last year. And so since it has, cutting in sharply. The German’s ready smile has been replaced by a scowl. This campaign there has not been a single Ferrari win. As the year has gone on if anything the red cars have drifted away from the pace.
Sebastian Vettel recently waxed lyrical about his new environment, just as Alain Prost did 25 years ago, and Gilles Villeneuve a dozen before that… – Nigel Roebuck
The confidence has dissipated; now all look bewildered. Running in circles. Strategy, excellent last year, now has developed a scarcely credible air. Worst of all, in response there’s been a classic Ferrari round of heads on spikes, particularly from the engineering department.
And we really should have seen it coming.
For Seb too the story has been a familiar one. “Sebastian Vettel recently waxed lyrical about his new environment,” Roebuck added back in early 2015, before he started to caution, “just as Alain Prost did 25 years ago, and Gilles Villeneuve a dozen before that. When Fernando Alonso [who Vettel replaced] joined Ferrari for 2010, he said it was his hope to spend the rest of his career there.”
Quite. Upon arrival at Maranello there is excitement; reverence. But then disappointment. And, almost inexorably, fingers start to be pointed even at the star driver. Rather like the messianic figure in religion he carries the hopes but also the sins of the people. Then upon faltering his destruction is required to absolve the sinners; he is discredited to make way for the new Godhead.
Was there some of this when Ferrari boss Maurizio Arrivabene went out of his way recently to talk to Sky Italia, and rather conspicuously missed big opportunities to big up his pilot? Perhaps. Perhaps not.
In some ways too the expectation that follows Ferrari is odd. Its history is not one of consistent championship bagging, instead a very large proportion of its titles came in three peculiar eras: with Alberto Ascari in the early-to-mid 1950s; with Niki Lauda in the mid-1970s and of course the astonishing run of dominance with Michael Schumacher in the noughties.
I think Ferrari’s problems have been always the same. They have such incredible pressure. They have probably the pressure of all the teams put together – Jo Ramirez
And it likely is not coincidence that the two most recent of these shared something – senior personnel having peculiar protection from the politics and external shrieking that Gilles described.
“I think Ferrari’s problems have been always the same” said the sage Jo Ramirez over the Mexican Grand Prix weekend just passed. “They have such incredible pressure. They have probably the pressure of all the teams put together.
“They have a lot of intrusion…when Ferrari lose or win, it’s not only Ferrari [that lose or win], but the whole Italian industry.”
While on the rare occasions that things were different, in the mid-1970s era it was Luca Montezemolo who – not only with his charm and judgment which he had to throw away but also close association with the Agnelli dynasty that ran FIAT – was able in a way rarely seen before or since among Ferrari management to simply get on with it. As Lauda reminisced of his former boss: “Because of his social background he was largely proof against the daily round of intrigue, and this meant he could concentrate on the real job in hand, something of a privileged position for a Ferrari team chief.”
Almost uniquely too for one in his role he advised and informed the Commendatore Enzo Ferrari in a full and impartial way. More vital than you might think, as the Commendatore by then did not attend races with any regularity and media coverage at the time was rudimentary. “Let us be charitable and say that some Ferrari team managers have put a highly individual interpretation on the events of a race or day” noted Roebuck of this communication channel.
I recall a meeting in the early days when we’d had a glitch, and Luca di Montezemolo was about to launch a witch hunt, and I said, ‘We’re not going to have a witch hunt. I’m responsible for everyone so if you want to blame anybody, blame me' – Ross Brawn
Then we had Jean Todt, Ross Brawn et al do similar for Schumacher’s run of success, somehow shielding the team from ‘the daily round of intrigue’ that Lauda spoke of, in Todt and Brawn’s case via it seems sheer imperturbability. Thus shielded the team in time became devastating.
“I recall a meeting in the early days when we’d had a glitch,” Ross Brawn recounted recently, “and [the by then Ferrari president] Luca di Montezemolo was about to launch a witch hunt, and I said, ‘We’re not going to have a witch hunt. I’m responsible for everyone so if you want to blame anybody, blame me.’ The [Italian] media was very prolific over there [indeed Brawn elsewhere recalled that when he arrived at Maranello Ferrari managers actually had press cuttings delivered to their desks daily…], and there was a tendency to want to hang someone out to dry if anything went wrong.
“Jean [Todt, then the team principal] was already that way and I think some of the senior management team had started to recognise that it was the right way to operate, to protect the people below you, because they could then do a much better job.”
But as Ramirez concluded in Mexico, “since the times of Jean Todt and Ross Brawn it hasn’t been the same…”
The rest of the time the team has reverted swiftly to type. It is indeed curious that although Ferrari’s formula for success (and more to the point, of its failure) is well known, the team itself still spends most of its existence wilfully concocting a very different brew. You wonder why they’ve never collectively twigged on the lessons from history.
As noted, this year there has been blood-letting aplenty, most notably with the departure of highly-rated former technical head James Allison. Admittedly that owed something to Allison’s personal tragedy yet, observers wondered, could not some way have been found to keep him aboard even if he wasn’t giving full time commitment? That way not only could you call on him at least some of the time you also would not lose him to a rival. In any case, word emerged not long later that it all owed more to a difference of opinion with the abrasive Ferrari president Sergio Marchionne.
And such a modus operandi is perhaps more inappropriate than ever these days ,when quick fixes to reach competitiveness hardly exist and the development of a winning collective is a slow, delicate and organic process. Look at how Mercedes’s building itself to dominance started years before 2014. Think indeed about the Ferrari noughties dominance mentioned – the Scuderia’s first drivers’ title therein was in 2000 but arguably the first brick was laid when Todt arrived as General Manager, all the way back in mid-1993. To offer some kind of reference point, imagine if Arrivabene was to suggest tomorrow that he needed until 2023 to build to Ferrari’s next drivers’ crown…
It doesn’t stop drivers being attracted to the red team either. Ferrari can be said to be the F1 equivalent of Marilyn Monroe.
Even if recent rumours of ensnaring Paddy Lowe are true presumably he will have minimal influence on next year’s machine. So that means 2018 at the earliest before his impact is felt, and perhaps it’ll be even later if gardening leave has to be worked through. And such is the team’s lack of patience how many more will have been through the revolving door by then? That’s also without factoring in the assumption that next year’s rules with greater emphasis on aero will not at all suit the Scuderia.
It doesn’t stop drivers being attracted to the red team either. Ferrari can be said to be the F1 equivalent of Marilyn Monroe – a partner with considerable allure, and even with all of the previous failed relationships the appeal to the suitor is inimitable. No doubt part of it is the call to ego that it’ll be different for them; they will be the one to make it work. The trouble is the probability is that it won’t be different.
It’s like a tape on a loop. All drivers arrive at Maranello besotted as Roebuck noted; talking the good talk. Many even have spoken in advance for years wistfully of ‘driving for Ferrari one day’. But almost all in time leave sore and bewildered. And the list it applies to reads like a who’s who of F1 history – Tazio Nuvolari, Juan Manuel Fangio, John Surtees, Jacky Ickx, Niki Lauda, Nigel Mansell, Alain Prost, Fernando Alonso among plenty others. We almost certainly could have added Gilles Villeneuve had he lived to see the end of the 1982 season; perhaps we can add Jackie Stewart too given he was all set to join for 1968 only to find to his consternation that his seat had been offered to someone else too (JYS had the fortune to learn the lessons before committing to driving for the team). Heck even Schumi’s departure was messy.
To think even with this weight from history plenty still assumed that Alonso was the bad seed towards the end of his time there. He regularly criticised the team in public they said (although they, to my knowledge, curiously never managed to come up with specific examples beyond his joke to the effect that he’d like another car for his birthday in 2013). For what it’s worth Fernando spoke in his final weeks at the team of murmurs being set running to discredit him.
Many sneered too when Alonso from far back in his McLaren suggested that Ferrari’s 2015 ‘revival’ wasn’t all that. But even then analysis by F1 Fanatic's Keith Collantine suggested he had a point. Ferrari got closer to Mercedes between seasons, of course it did, with its average deficit on ultimate pace declining from 1.14% in 2014 to 0.77%. But this 2015 deficit was according to Collantine “comparable to where they were in 2012 and 2013, when Alonso's patience was wearing thin”. It also meant that for all of the plaudits Ferrari only in fact made up around a third of the pace gap to the silver standard-bearers. Perhaps it says something about how expectations influence perceptions. James Allen indeed at around this time even while praising Ferrari, when asked to explain the extent of the 2015 ‘resurgence’ the first thing he said was “they came from a long way back”.
The sense of a giant leap forward also was amplified by Merc’s closest 2014 challengers Red Bull and Williams falling away – Red Bull indeed had its deficit to Mercedes grow from 0.96% then to 1.52% in 2015. This campaign the Milton Keynes squad has restored its firm status as best of the rest.
With this a 2016 title tilt for Ferrari was never likely, but it didn’t stop us getting carried away as noted.
And here’s another quote from the recent-ish past to consider. “Oddly enough, despite all the catastrophe going on around the outside of it at the management level, they [Ferrari] could just fluke into a good car next year because it’s the first of the James Allison cars, and the engine this year [in 2014] was deliberately configured to be small and concentrate on heat rejection for the benefit of aerodynamics. Now that’s turned out not to be the way to go. So there’s a big chunk to be easily found there”.
In 2014 I made the decision and had two years more on my contract, but felt I was right to go. Every year was a little bit more stress because you are not winning and it seems that it is your fault – Fernando Alonso
These are the words of Motorsport magazine’s Mark Hughes late in 2014. “They may well…be much more competitive,” he then said of the forthcoming 2015 season, “but people might assign the wrong reasons to that. I can see them having a better season year next but not because they changed the management”. Prophetic I’m sure you'll agree. In other words Ferrari in 2015 was in large part bound to improve. It was claiming merely the low hanging fruit. The stuff higher up is a bit trickier to get to.
Alonso meanwhile in his struggling McLaren has played suggestions that he’d committed career suicide unflinchingly with a dead bat – every time insisting that the championship is the thing and even hinting on occasion that he knew enough to conclude that Ferrari would always come up short. “They [Ferrari] tried for five years and it was difficult to keep the trust” was one quote of many.
In recent months he’s expanded a little more. “I was right. I was right because I felt I was right,” Alonso said this summer when asked about his Ferrari departure.
“In 2014 I made the decision and had two years more on my contract, but felt I was right to go.
“Every year was a little bit more stress because you are not winning and it seems that it is your fault. Now it is not a relief that they are not winning or having more problems, I don’t wish any problems on Ferrari because it is a team that I will always have in my heart. But in terms of driving, how competitive [I am] or my third world championship hopes, then you [need to] drive for Mercedes or McLaren-Honda. That is my opinion and the feeling from that decision.”
For a long time such claims were dismissed in the style of Mandy Rice-Davies – “he would say that, wouldn’t he?” But history – both of the recent and more distant variety – is bearing him out.
