Ferrari buckles in winless season

The Formula One paddock shares a common dream, and it has nothing to do with the result of this year’s title.

Though Lewis Hamilton’s antics in Japan gave the sport plenty to think about, already minds are being turned to hopes for 2017 – in particular that Red Bull Racing, already second-best to Mercedes, will be able to mount a championship fight and break Formula One’s silver hegemony.

It’s a nice dream, but caution tinges these wants, at least for this writer, because they sound remarkably similar to the prediction made by all and sundry 12 months ago. The difference though is that in 2015 the hope was for a Ferrari-powered and Sebastian Vettel-driven title tilt this season.

At first the year looked promising – a binned easy win in Melbourne was forgiven in the hype of the almost race victory, but mistake after mistake soon made painfully obvious that error and mismanagement was the name of the Ferrari game.

Edicts new Ferrari overlord Sergio Marchionne about the necessity of immediate victory put team members, already burdened by the significance of the brand, under crushing pressure.

The side-effects have been brutal – the loss of ace technical director James Allison, a lack of major updates to the car until as late as Singapore, and insipid conservatism returning to the operational structure after a year or so of release.

Now, 17 rounds into the season and still winless, Ferrari and its faithful have started turning on themselves.

Vettel’s first-lap crash at the Malaysian Grand Prix provoked a backlash among the Italian media few could have imagined when the German was given his hero’s welcome to Maranello less than 24 months ago.

“It is clear now that Ferrari urgently needs a successful driver,” Corriere della Sera reported according to F1, and La Repubblica questioned “Maranello has sunk the highest paid driver in Ferrari history – or has Vettel lost his talent and speed?”.

The attack persisted into the Japanese Grand Prix, where Sky Italia asked team principal Maurizio Arrivabene, himself besieged at various times this season, whether an early contract renewal in the vein of those dealt to Michael Schumacher or Fernando Alonso might cure Vettel’s waning powers.

“Sebastian now has a contract with us,” he said. “We work together this year and again next year. Then during the next season we’ll see.

“Each of us has goals … so it is only right that anyone, no matter who it is, earns their place and their salary.

“Sebastian just needs to focus on the car … sometimes you have to re-focus him, remind him to be focused on the main job.”

It is classic Ferrari behaviour to seek out scapegoats during times of poor performance – which, as this column has outlined before, are more frequent than not in the Scuderia’s history – but this very behaviour creates the vicious cycle of poor performance the scapegoating is attempting to stymie.

Arrivabene, to his credit, later admitted that Vettel was neither the problem nor solution to the team’s woes. It was likewise fair to say that the team’s star driver cannot rely on his four-time-champion status to earn him contracts automatically.

However, against a background of low morale and a desperate and fruitless scrabbling for answers, adding distance between the team and its driver is likely to frustrate an increasingly disillusioned Vettel rather than deliver a gentle hurry-up.

Moreover, doubting Vettel’s objective status as an Formula One great, whether directly by management or through applied pressure by the press or from the board, only looks petty from a team gifted with sufficient resources to contend for the championship every season.

For an example of superior crisis management one need only turn to Vettel’s former Red Bull Racing team. Even though team principal Christian Horner et al. made an unedifying song and dance about Renault’s poor 2015 power unit, at least in part to disguise the shortcomings of the chassis, throughout the entire saga the team was kept bonded under the Red Bull umbrella. Teammateship prevailed.

In contrast with Ferrari, Red Bull Racing has remained remarkably stable in its now three seasons without a title and despite just five victories from the last 59 rounds. Such composure is unthinkable at Ferrari.

Perhaps, given this reason, confidence in Red Bull Racing’s potential 2017 title challenge is warranted – but, if it does succeed, it will almost certainly come in parallel with yet more Maranello personnel forced towards the exit for failing to deliver Ferrari and Italy’s impossible expectations.