Ferrar’nt : a deep dive into the Scuderia’s compromised campaign
Written on January 12th, 2023 by {"login"=>"jcbphc21", "email"=>"f20181005@hyderabad.bits-pilani.ac.in", "display_name"=>"Journal Club, BPHC", "first_name"=>"Journal Club", "last_name"=>"BPHC"}Expectations were high at Le Castellet; Everybody in the paddock, the fans, the Ferrari pit wall and Vedant from behind his laptop. Sexually identifying (probably) as a Tifosi, a pseudo-Italian sucker for the Scuderia Ferrari Formula One Team, Vedant did not call off his Sunday plans for the evening to watch Ferrari bungle yet another race in one ingenious way or the other. The concerns were valid as the team were en route to conceding a nearly 100-point lead in the driver’s championship and handing it to their rivals on a silver platter.
What once started out as a passionate contention for track position and supremacy on the penultimate lap of the season opener, oh, how the tables had turned!
What once appeared to surpass the precedent set by the historic (and controversial) 2021 season, oh, how the times had changed!
What we once expected to be as good as the final season of Breaking Bad but got served with the final season of Game Of Thrones instead, oh, how the mighty had fallen!
After yet another stellar qualifying performance, Charles Leclerc started from pole at Circuit Paul Ricard and preserved his lead into the first corner. A good sign? Perhaps but the Tifosi knew all too well. A concerning lack of coordination and reliability coupled with a winless streak between the Australian and Austrian Grand Prix had sent the fanbase on a depression spiral. During their 2 year sabbatical from fighting at the front, Ferrari took great strides in rethinking, regrouping and restructuring and 2022 was supposed to be the culmination of all that. With a beast of a car shaped like a red blood cell, this season was supposed to be theirs.
We are approaching lap 17 of the race, and the Monegasque is fighting hard to maintain a delta of 1s at the cost of his swiftly degrading tyres with a DRS-aided Flying Dutchman in hot pursuit. And before we knew it, it was over. An ariel shot of the Ferrari was spotted lodged in between the barriers. A few seconds of radio silence was succeeded with an audibly nonplussed and frustrated Leclerc letting out a sharp shriek. It was the last straw that broke the camel’s back. It was an unpredicted incident, but he knew it, the fans knew it, and Vedant knew it. All hopes for a fight to the title were over by De Facto. It was inevitable.
Being a long-time fan of the motorsports team since the days of Sebastian Vettel, Vedant had not felt such a pain surge through his body since 2018. Bearing an eerie resemblance, Leclerc would go on to suffer the same fate as Seb since Hockenheim.
Vedant slammed his laptop shut, that Hotstar subscription paid out of his mom’s card was of no use to him now. He took a moment to rethink his choices of having picked this team as his own. His role model had as much confidence and trust issues as he did! How much longer must he invest his trust, time and emotion in this team before he could celebrate another one of their imprints in the history books as they deserved? Did they truly deserve it? Vedant could spend all night following every tangent of thought on this matter with an already deteriorating mental health, but the extent of the damage seemed deeper than that. He felt oddly numb. What’s worse than a fan who isn’t loyal to his team? A fan who has stopped caring about the sport.
But what really went wrong?
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- Ferrari
- Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the Australian GP
A dream start for the Scuderia with Leclerc winning 2/3 races and consistent podium appearances including a 1-2 finish at the season opener, establishing their intent of winning the championship title/s from the get-go. - Italian (Imola), United States (Miami) and Spanish GP
Having met his match with the likes of Max Verstappen, the pressure of a title fight was dialled up for the Monegasque as he succumbed to it at Imola with a late spin. Ferrari is also plagued with reliability issues with Sainz and Leclerc retiring at Imola and Barcelona, respectively, giving Red Bull ample ground to begin playing catch up with the lead Ferrari had established in the previous races. - Monaco, Azerbaijan and the Canadian GP
This phase was graced by the first (of many) colossal Ferrari fuckups, starting by subjecting Leclerc to a premature pitstop, ruining his hopes of standing at the top stop of the podium at Monaco despite a front-row lockout. The plague swept across the calendar at Ferrari’s camp with a double DNF at Azerbaijan, snowballing into a back-of-the-grid start for Leclerc at Montreal which, unfortunately, didn’t end like Perez’s race at Sakhir 2020. - Great Britain, Austrian and French GP
- Resurgence of Mercedes
Ahead of the pre-season track session at Barcelona, we all expected Mercedes to be back with vengeance. Having surrendered the driver’s title to Red Bull on an extraordinary technicality, Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One Team were undoubtedly the favourites for the 2022 season. The W13 unveiled at Barcelona was an interesting concept, but the real shocker was its updated or rather evolved successor that touched grass at testing in Bahrain; a car with no sidepods! “Like a melted bar of chocolate left out in the sun” was how Martin Brundle decided to put it and rightfully so. Unlike anything seen before, a bold aerodynamic philosophy also comes with its bold risks. The engineers back at Brackley struggled a lot with ironing out every single kink that popped up on this car for the entirety of the first half of the championship, most notably (and evidently) its porpoising issues. I’ll spare you the technical details, but porpoising is a phenomenon (commonly observed in the prescribed 2022 chassis) where violent and frequent oscillations about the horizontal plane are set off in the car due to the reintroduction of the ground effect philosophy on the chassis and the proximity of the floor to the ground, making the entire car bob up and down at the straights. This sidepod’nt concept of the new W13 left it more vulnerable to this phenomenon at the detriment of the driver’s physical health and comfort. If that wasn’t enough, the straight line speed of the W13 was compromised as well despite the reduced drag, owing to an underperforming power unit and the porpoising.Yes, Mercedes started off on the back foot, but they had something that most teams didn’t- consistency. And I mean overall absolute consistency. Not only did that car and its power unit(s) hold it together for the entirety of the season (with their first and only mechanical DNF at the last race!), their stacked driver lineup in the likes of George Russel and Lewis Hamilton have consistent top 5 finishes and podium appearances for pretty much the whole season including George’s first win at Sao Paulo!
Although the contributions seemed insufficient at first with the points and pace deficit with the Front, they really started paying their dividends when Ferrari began losing its footing over the course of the season and Mercedes eventually came into striking distance of the second place in Constructors that went down to the final race at Abu Dhabi.
The crux of this monologue is that Mercedes hindered the campaign of the compromised Ferrari, taking points off them when they were only focused on trying to get the best of Red Bull when it almost ended up getting the best of them (they managed to finish 2nd, ahead of Merc).</li> - The Bulls
Ah yes, do I really need to elaborate on this one? Adrian Newey did it again. We been knew that Max was their next golden boy and all he needed was a capable machine under him to do what Vettel did in 2010-13. Max Verstappen grew to be a real thorn in the side of the Mercedes camp towards the end of the latter half of their dominant years, and it manifested in an exciting driver’s title fight in ’21 that went down to the wire at the last race. Even after throwing every resource in their 2021 campaign, Red Bull managed to one-up their opponents in what was supposed to be a clean-slate with the new regulations. Acquiring Sergio Perez proved to be the right call as he did exactly what was expected of the cursed second driver seat, and coupled with Verstappen’s potential, the integration of a versatile chassis and arguably the fastest power unit ensured that the team functioned at a very high level throughout the season, evident in their consistent pitstop times, strategy calls and the continuous development of the car under the cost cap (despite what the news about its breach implied)
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It is true that luck wasn’t on the side of Charles Leclerc, but neither was his team, at least in a complete sense. Let’s see the progress of the season and the journey of Ferrari alongside it:
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A trio that served the Ferrari fans a ray of hope in a tunnel 6 races long ( and counting) before indefinitely stopping the apparent resurgence dead in its tracks. I could talk all day about why the British GP was my favourite race of the year ( cue the “ AND THROUGH GOES LEWIS HAMILTON” ) but let’s not deviate from the fact that Sainz fought for a much-deserved win despite team orders, which I’m sure must’ve made the Tifosi quite proud. This momentum carried into the next sprint weekend in Austria only to be marred by some more, you guessed it- technical issues! Sainz had a good race, calculating a move on Verstappen until his power unit decided to turn the chassis of his Ferrari into a tinderbox. The whole fanbase must’ve had their hearts in their mouths in the closing laps as Leclerc had to nurse his throttle to victory, keeping Max at bay. And as for France, well , you already know.
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What does this mean for the Scuderia?
While Ferrari has much work on their to-do list, the first of which should be personnel amendments. We know that the buck stops with the team Mattia Binotto, their team principal, and as of now, it’s been an established report that he has stepped down from his role and departed from the organisation entirely, which is disappointing, to be honest. He fit quite well in a technical role at the outfit and contributed to much of the success of the Scuderia before being promoted to team principal. It helps knowing that since the team did not continue aggressively developing their car throughout the season, it probably implies that they had already diverted a lot more resources and attention to their 2023 campaign. It is no secret that it has been a difficult season for Ferrari with a lot of pieces to pick up but I believe that Ferrari are one of those teams that will always have a kind of legendary status, a team that everyone wants to see do well despite the number of let downs. This is the point where we trespass into purely speculations but I’m positive (and so are the Tifosi, despite the trust issues) that they will develop yet another competitive car and am manifesting a 3 way fight for the title in ’23.