The world of Formula One is one which is a mix between results which are decided by a thousandth of a second and one where long term planning defines the future of the team. The world famous F1 guru designer handed his notice in at Red Bull and within less than a year had returned to his drawing board with the Silverstone based Aston Martin team.

Yet this notice period and gardening leave from Red Bull was incredibly short by modern standards with a number of senior F1 personnel often spending two years between leaving and starting their new roles.

Recruitment is a huge problem for Ferrari given they are the only top running team team who have their centre of operations outside the UK. As Freed Vasseur noted when he was announced as Mattio Binotto’s replacement: “It’s not the same situation. You can switch from Red Bull to Mercedes and keep the same home, keep the children in the same school from Monday to Friday, everything is perfect. If you want to come to Italy, the approach is different. You have to change the family environment,” he declared in 2023.

Hamilton the figure head for ferrari renewal

As an outsider this view is perfectly plausible, yet in the world of Italian motorsport it is utterly unacceptable. FORZA FERRARI are the first Italian words any new recruit is taught in Maranello. Yet like the English have discovered in terms of world football, a glorious history means nothing when it comes to today’s bragging rights.

Ferrari’s last win in the drivers’ championship was in 2007, when McLaren failed to control the infighting between their drivers – Lewis Hamilton (rookie) and Fernando Alonso (double reigning world champion.) Kimi Raikkonen’s stole the championship win in one of the greatest F1 comebacks of all time, overhauling a nigh on impossible 17 point deficit (when only ten points were awarded for a win) in the final two Grand Prix of the season from under the nose of the squabbling McLaren drivers.

The following year when Lewis Hamilton claimed his maiden F1 title, it was again Ferrari who stole the bragging rights as they claimed the teams’ championship. Now some seventeen year’s on the icon Italian racing marque are in their longest drought without an F1 title and fever in Italy is running high.

The signing of Lewis Hamilton was for some a folly, but for others it is time for Ferrari to enter the 21st century in terms of their operations and team management. Almost three decades earlier a certain Michael Schumacher joined the Scuderia in its previous longest drought without success and along with Ross Brawn and Jean Todt brought the longest successive period of success to the Italian F1 team.

Ferrari’s last hurrah

Whilst controversial and at times guilty of down right cheating, Schumacher was the driving force behind six year’s of Ferrari dominance in F1. Yet behind the scenes a revolution had been taking place in Maranello where the culture of Italian machismo was stifled and one of Northern European efficiency established.

Winning became the norm for the iconic team in red but this all ended when Honda sold their brilliantly designed 2009 car to Ross Brawn for a single British pound. Then came the Red Bull dominance with Sebastian Vettel for four year’s before an unprecedented era of  dominance which saw Mercedes win eight consecutive constructor titles and seven driver championships between Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton.

Of course with hindsight had the FIA regulated the sport properly, Hamilton’s first title would have been awarded to Ferrari’s Felipe Massa, the first Brazilian to win since the legendary Ayrton Senna. Yet collusion between F1’s supremo Bernie Ecclestone and his long standing friend, Max Mosely (FIA president) meant the result of the Singapore Grand Prix stood, despite one of the biggest race fixing scandals of all time.

In the intervening years there have been many offs, buts and maybes for F1’s most successful team, yet the story of the own goal scored this season by the Italians is yet to be written. With the fastest car over the closing six races of 2024, Ferrari and Hamilton believed this would be their year.

Monumental Ferrari strategic error

Whilst the F1 news headlines focused on the hunt by Lando Norris to beat Verstappen to the drivers championship in 2024, Ferrari were rapidly closing in on the Woking based team’s lead in the title race. 75 points behind with six weekends remaining, Ferrari hunted down the British racing marque at an extraordinary art rate to finish the season in Abu Dhabi just 14 points in arrears.

Yet in an apparent moments of madness, team boss Fred Vasseur decided in the final year of this set of F1 car design regulations to rip it all up and start again. Its just not the thing to do. The French team principal revealed at the last festive occasion in Maranello of the 2025 F1 racing challenger: “99% of the car is new”.

With the Italian media baying for blood as Ferrari struggle to remain a top four challenger this year, team boss Fred Vasseur went on the offensive in Canada. In the words of former Ferrari communications officer Roberto Boccafogli, the Ferrari boss claimed the team’s current travails were the result of Italian media interference.

Of course such a suggestion is utterly ridiculous and Ferrari’s troubles will only become even more magnified with each passing Grand Prix until the end of the year. “I mean, so it is our problem? The problem is coming from the media? The media say, not me, because there are people on the paper saying [it’s] the media responsible for the Ferrari crisis? Come on!!!” Boccafogli maintains.

Fred Vasseur has two races left

“Then in this big situation, everybody started asking, is the company still supporting Fred and this Scuderia and the team as they were supporting them, three, four, five months ago?” The Italian also explains the telling comments from Ferrari group chairman, John Elkann who recited Fred Vasseur. ”The defender, the official defender, of Fred Vasseur. He’s the man who wanted Fred Vasseur. So now the situation is just giving the feeling of giving the feeling of being very, very divided. There is not feeling of unity, working together, but some divisions.”

“I really think that Austria and then especially Silverstone will play a major role in what can happen in future,” Boccafogli concluded.

Will Ferrari continue their recent trend of replacing the team’s boss every three years, only time will tell. But one thing is certain, the pressure on Vasseur will simply build and build until Ferrari win at least one Grand Prix. All else will be considered utter failure.