Ferrari: Monza lays bare engine and drivers. But failing now is too easy

The “day after” the Monza Grand Prix is known for drawing absolute verdicts on Ferrari, a trend that tends to emerge almost at every race now. When Hamilton won in Barcelona, everyone was sure that Ferrari finally had a world championship car, and after Monza, everyone is certain that the SF-26 is a failed project. The reality is that the car is the same (updates aside, of course). A fantastic chassis with an engine enormously behind. Hours can be spent talking about Ferrari’s “mentality” not being up to par, but when Hamilton or Leclerc pressed the gas pedal almost to the point of breaking the chassis but were still left behind, it was not a mentality problem.

Vasseur arrived at GeS quietly, interpreted by almost everyone as a fallback after receiving excellent refusals. Yet he set up a half revolution, betting (also in this case somewhat reluctantly) on Loïc Serra for the first time in his career as technical director. Looking at the SF-26’s chassis-suspension package, it cannot be said that it was a mistake. The starting point for the engine this year, however, was dramatic and it is no coincidence that many heads of Maranello’s engine department have already been fired (and others will be), in view of a revolution underway in that sector as well, which began already in winter, when the thermal part problems clearly emerged in the factory. To be clear: the original sin of badly designing the engine, at the dawn of a regulatory era entirely focused on it, is a very serious fault for the Maranello team, but seeing what is happening behind the scenes, it cannot be said that there is no full awareness or that they are not trying to find a solution in that department as well.

ADUO 2 worked, but miracles don’t exist. Hamilton with wrong strategy, could have finished fourth

The famous “ADUO 2” arrived at Monza and bore fruit, but miracles in engineering do not exist and the gap to Mercedes remains and could only emerge significantly on such a circuit. In the interview after qualifying, Leclerc said “tomorrow it will be a problem on the straights” and this is amusing, considering the track’s morphology. The same track where he won in 2019 with a car with a super engine as we all know, and where in 2014 (another year of a wrong Ferrari engine) Kimi Raikkonen finished ninth, 1 minute behind Hamilton who won with Mercedes. Yesterday Hamilton himself suffered a 24-second gap to Antonelli: certainly too much, but not too surprising given the premises.

The only Ferrari in the race battled with Piastri’s McLaren for most of the race and then finished 5 seconds behind the two papaya cars. However, Hamilton’s strategy was fundamentally wrong: the medium tire for the entire race was certainly not the best option, and Lewis complained enormously about it on the radio. One wonders why the Englishman was not stopped during the VSC to change tires, and the impression is that the pit wall’s fear was that he would not then be able to make the necessary overtakes to recover, given the car’s lack of top speed. The void under the hood inevitably continues to generate a chain effect on many decisions, as we recently described also at Zandvoort. However, this situation certainly accounted for at least the 5 seconds advantage with which the two McLarens crossed the finish line ahead of Hamilton’s SF-26, meaning that the overall value of the car could indeed be around the Papaya team, just off the podium. Not good, obviously, but not so far from the realistic expectations before the race. Essentially, Monza remains a track that from a technical point of view has limited value, not for nothing teams used to bring a dedicated package to this track in the past, except for engine power. And this weekend’s race simply confirmed what we have been saying since the start of the season, namely that the problem of the SF-26 is mainly under the hood.

Where Vasseur falls short is in driver management. Not just as team orders

However, there is one point where Frederic Vasseur is indeed falling short, and that is driver management. The common conception is that Ferrari must necessarily choose a number one driver, something the French TP absolutely does not want to do. Whether this is due to choices, personal reasons, or simply because he is caught between two fires is unknown. Hamilton is a seven-time World Champion, a prominent public figure to manage, while Leclerc has not only been with Ferrari for 8 years but recently closed a long-term renewal, making it very complicated to make choices in this situation. So far, the team has relied almost entirely on the professionalism of the drivers, but what happened on track at Monza, followed by Hamilton’s harsh post-race statements, shows that the situation is getting out of hand. It is the opinion of the writer that Leclerc made a mistake yesterday by forcing Hamilton onto the gravel at the first chicane. Beyond the regulations, one cannot pretend that Ferrari is a team like any other and Monza a race like any other. Hamilton entered aggressively at the first corner but without pushing Leclerc off, who should have taken a tighter line and played cleaner precisely because of the responsibility of driving a Ferrari at Monza. Hamilton’s verbal attack, directly at Vasseur, after the race is a symptom of the Englishman’s attempt to have precedence in the team that he claims but that Vasseur, rightly or wrongly, does not want to give him, a game to which Leclerc, with this year’s mistakes, is exposing himself. Now one can easily agree with Hamilton or Vasseur but there is a key aspect missing, namely a minimum of team spirit. Formula 1 is certainly an extremely competitive world and every driver’s first rival is his teammate, but Ferrari, at Monza, is perhaps the only team that can create a sense of belonging and collaboration even among drivers. The total silence on the rules of engagement meant that already at the start Hamilton threw himself inside Leclerc and the Monegasque responded by putting him in the gravel at the first corner. Everything, indeed, except cohesion and team spirit. Not that this situation is new or exclusive to Vasseur: Arrivabene managed to get even an “iceman” like Raikkonen on edge, just to say how long-standing the embarrassment in driver management by the red pit wall is.

Leclerc’s crash and the all-or-nothing that almost always leads to nothing

Concluding the Leclerc topic, the serious mistake at Parabolica with the huge crash into the barriers is a clear symptom that the Monegasque was living another all-or-nothing weekend, and that he could not accept all the overtakes he was suffering. On this precise aspect, it should be noted that Ferrari was struggling with energy in the first laps, because it managed to break even with the competition using boost and/or overtake mode, but then found itself more vulnerable at the end of the lap, unable to defend against overtakes. It took a few laps to stabilize the group, but Leclerc was desperately trying to stay attached to the leaders to have a chance of winning and ended up overdoing it on the gas pedal while off line, thus losing the rear. A long-standing problem for Charles is trying to go beyond the limits of the car, which certainly has its roots in the frustration of never having had a truly competitive car in many years, but which does not justify throwing points away in that way, besides budget cap issues and possible damage to the power unit. Fortunately, the Monegasque suffered no physical consequences, although the impact was extremely violent.

Mercedes and Antonelli unbeatable. Second place in constructors remains against McLaren

So what remains for Ferrari post Monza? An excellent chassis and an improved engine that on less extreme tracks can bring the red into the fight for podiums and wins. The title race, however, appears definitively closed, for everyone, with Antonelli and Mercedes hardly reachable. A battle between McLaren and Ferrari for second place in the constructors’ championship therefore becomes likely.

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