No other F1 team came close to Team Ferrari’s accomplishments, which included winning 16 constructors’ championships. Williams, with nine titles, is in second place.
With five constructor titles and five drivers’ titles for Michael Schumacher between 2000 and 2004, Ferrari had a strong start to the new millennium. And Kimi Raikkonen won two more races in 2007. But then Scuderia Ferrari’s winning streak came to an end.
Sebastian Vettel, a four-time world champion, joined Ferrari in 2015. He won three races in his debut year and was expected to win more championships. Vettel was able to place second in the drivers’ championships of 2017 and 2018, but that was it. Over the previous two years, Leclerc has far outperformed Sebastian Vettel in terms of consistency and performance.
Vettel wasn’t as far ahead as Ferrari had anticipated he would be at the conclusion of the season when Leclerc entered and won seven pole positions and races. That increased the burden on Vettel to deliver.
Ferrari officially announced that Carlos Sainz Jr. would succeed Sebastian Vettel as the F1 team’s driver for the 2021 season, confirming that emerging young stars Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz were the team’s future.
Some people think that Leclerc’s success is not the cause of Vettel’s decline in confidence, but when Vettel challenged Lewis Hamilton, Hamilton simply defeated Vettel. He repeatedly failed when it came to Lewis Hamilton.
Since his collision in the middle of 2018 while leading the German Grand Prix, Vettel has been on a downward trajectory. There were other instances that suggested Sebastian Vettel was losing his cool under pressure, too.
Lewis Hamilton was rear-ended by Sebastian Vettel on purpose in Azerbaijan in 2017 after Vettel thought Hamilton had deliberately braked in front of him to get him to do the same or swerve to avoid a collision.
With a pole position start in Singapore, Vettel had a chance to win the 2017 championship, but he collided with Max Verstappen and Kimmi Raikkonen at turn one, ending their respective races. Hamilton won the race and took the lead in the standings, which he maintained for the remainder of the year.
With needless collisions and several grid penalties that cost points in 2018, everything only got worse. With Leclerc and Vettel beginning on the grid in average positions and both having average finishes, those mistakes were noticed throughout the entire season. That didn’t include the separate retirements of 5.4 and 9.2.
Only in the Turkish Grand Prix in 2020, which was held in challenging racing circumstances, could Vettel once again perform at his peak. Due to the track’s recent resurfacing and damp weather, drivers had trouble powering down. Vettel came in third and Leclerc came in fourth for Ferrari, proving that the team was successful.
The driver’s performance is to blame for Ferrari’s slump; the car has been having problems and wasn’t quick enough even in ideal driving circumstances.
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Why Ferrari won’t update its “main” vehicle in Miami
After the following race in Miami, Ferrari won’t unveil its “major” update to the Formula 1 car.
Ferrari altered the car slightly during testing, altering the floor, but once the season started, it only added a rear wing with less downforce to meet the requirements of the Jeddah Corniche circuit in Saudi Arabia.
During Friday practice at the third round in Australia, it tested a reworked diffuser on Charles Leclerc’s car—its first update of the year—but it did not compete with it because it was an experiment meant to collect data for Ferrari’s development strategy.
Due to the weekend’s tight schedule and the fact that Imola was the first sprint event of the season with just one free practice session before qualifying on Friday, Ferrari decided not to debut its update there.
Ferrari is not planning a new floor for the upcoming race in Miami either; instead, it will adopt a new, circuit-specific downforce arrangement.
Additional adjustments might be made to help reduce the porpoising, which is also reducing Ferrari’s performance.
Compared to the other circuits we’ve used so far, Miami is a high-speed one. We will use a different setup for downforce, for sure.
We’re still working on the porpoising, which is clearly more noticeable than Red Bull as you can see. Additionally, there is performance to aim for within.
Ferrari’s strategy has paid off as it has won two of the first four races, but Red Bull, the team vying for the championship, introduced a significant upgrade during preseason testing and has since added other minor updates, including revised lightweight versions of existing components.
Conflicting information exists on Red Bull’s overweight RB18 and the precise amount it may have saved.
The Red Bull was reportedly up to 20 kg over the weight limit during testing. With an estimated 4 kg lost just between Australia and Imola, it is likely to be significantly less than that now, possibly under 10 kg.
Red Bull did not spend a lot of time in Italy discussing the weight-saving changes; team manager Christian Horner simply said, “We took a bit of a risk” by bringing some new parts into a sprint weekend.
There will be ups and downs because the championship is still so young, according to Horner.
Naturally, Max has suffered because of the DNFs, but the season is lengthy and we will draw a lot of strength from this weekend.
“It was crucial for us to gain ground on Ferrari in the championship, which we have done in both championship tables.
“Ferrari has a fantastic car, fantastic drivers, but they’ve just been unlucky in this race.
However, they will undoubtedly be very competitive in two weeks, and I believe this will be the case for the entire season.
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Laurent Mekies, a Ferrari engineer, has stated that the team’s development of the 2021 car is now almost complete, with focus focused totally on the new age of F1 when it dawns in 2022. However, he adds that this does not imply they have stopped working on the SF21’s shortcomings.
This season, the million-dollar issue is: When should teams start thinking about next year’s car, when the significant set of rule changes take effect? However, other teams, like Ferrari, have had to balance development on this year’s car with that of next year’s machine. For Haas, the solution was to focus immediately on next year’s rules at the expense of this season.
Mekies, a Ferrari Racing Director and Head of Track Area, explained that the Scuderia has made the switch and is not continuing to develop this year’s car at Paul Ricard in front of this weekend’s French Grand Prix.
“From an automotive development standpoint, we have already taken our selections,” he declared. There won’t be a significant upgrade to address these issues [on the SF21] until 2022 at the earliest.
The Frenchman clarified that Ferrari will continue to work on understanding the problems with the SF21 even though they are not evolving it in the conventional sense of frequently producing new parts.
But you can always work on [the problems] by simply understanding them better, and if you understand them better an either because you correlate them better or you simply understand what are the reasons why we are performing a little less in those circumstances an it can open the door to solutions that you can already apply.
And because of this, coming here after a few races in which we experienced a lot of slow-speed bends is still a nice test for us. We want to assess how we improved and whether we gained any new knowledge. And this is the strategy we’re using to fight this weekend.
In the standings heading into the French Grand Prix, Ferrari is only two points ahead of McLaren, but their drivers are anticipating a return to “reality” following surprise pole positions for Charles Leclerc in Monaco and Baku, as well as a podium finish for Carlos Sainz in the Principality.
The Vettel situation
No team in the history of Formula One has achieved success close to Ferrari’s 16 constructors’ titles. With nine, Williams comes in second.
The Italian team had a successful new millennium. Between 2000 and 2004, Michael Schumacher won five drivers’ and constructors’ championships, then in 2007 he won two more times alongside Kimi Raikkonen. The winning, however, then ceased.
When Sebastian Vettel, a four-time world champion, joined the team in 2015, many people thought the team’s list of victories would grow. In the battles for the drivers’ championships in 2017 and 2018, the German came in second, but that was as good as it went, and over the past two years, 23-year-old Leclerc has outperformed Vettel.
In 2015, Sebastian Vettel’s first year with the team, the team has three victories under his belt.
It was made apparent that rising star Leclerc was the team’s future when it was revealed earlier this year that Vettel would be replaced by Carlos Sainz at Ferrari.
Duncan, though, does not think that Leclerc’s ascent is what has caused Vettel to lose faith.
He’s faced Lewis Hamilton, and Lewis has essentially destroyed him, according to Duncan. And ever since he crashed out of the lead in the German Grand Prix in the middle of 2018, he has been going downhill.
There were further incidents after that race that suggested Vettel was beginning to buckle under the weight of being Ferrari’s top driver.
In Azerbaijan in 2017, Vettel deliberately hit the side of Hamilton’s car after thinking the British driver had brake-tested him. Brake-testing is the deliberate application of the brakes to encourage the driver in front to do the same or swerve to avoid a collision.
In Singapore, he had the opportunity to take the lead in the 2017 championship, but after starting from first place, a collision with Raikkonen and Max Verstappen at turn one put a stop to the race for all three. The victory gave Hamilton the championship lead, which he would hold for the rest of the season.
The situation deteriorated in 2018. Unnecessary crashes and numerous grid penalties resulted in a significant loss of points. The most painful of the incidents was the one that occurred in Germany.
This year, the results of those mistakes were felt. Leclerc and Vettel had average grid positions of 8.3 and 12.2, respectively, and their average finishes, excluding retirements, were 5.4 and 9.2, respectively.
The last time we get a peek of Sebastian Vettel at his peak was at the Turkish Grand Prix.
In challenging racing circumstances, Vettel earned his lone podium of the year at the 2020 Turkish Grand Prix.
Drivers had trouble putting the power down due to recent track resurfacing and the rainy conditions.
Even without rain, a newly created track is slick, but Turkey’s unfavorable weather made everything more challenging. A slight over-acceleration causes you to spin out. Without enough, you will not succeed.
Vettel and Leclerc both finished in the top three in these challenging conditions, demonstrating the skill of Ferrari’s drivers.
Therefore, Ferrari’s struggles are not solely down to the drivers, such as Vettel’s lack of confidence or Leclerc’s sophomore slump. When racing in ideal conditions, the car hasn’t been good enough.