Ferrari flop: F1’s famous red cars expected better in 2016
FERRARI expected much better than this in 2016.
After ending last season with three wins and promises of pulling closer to Mercedes, Ferrari instead slid backward.
There have been no victories, just one podium finish in the last nine races and Ferrari is once again fending off questions about discord within Formula One’s most popular team.
Just look at last weekend’s race at the US Grand Prix: After a disappointing qualifying in which both drivers started on the third row, Sebastian Vettel finished fourth and Kimi Raikkonen didn’t finish at all when he was forced to return to the garage after leaving a pit stop with an improperly attached wheel.
Judged by race officials as an unsafe release, Ferrari was hit with a fine. Seeing sparks fly as he pulled away, Raikkonen put the car in reverse for a humiliating return drive back downhill as Ferrari slipped further behind Red Bull for second place in the team championship, which it hasn’t won since 2008.
“Far from ideal” is how the deadpan Raikkonen summed it up.
The same could be said about Ferrari’s entire season as Formula One heads to the Mexican Grand Prix this weekend.
Ferrari landed in Mexico last season full of optimism. Vettel’s had scored the non-Mercedes wins all year. He was a regular on the podium and Ferrari was cruising toward a second-place finish in the constructor’s championship.
There’s been none of the same confidence this year. The Ferrari drivers — both former world champions — have made more noise with their mouths than their cars, with Vettel complaining about slow drivers and he and Raikkonen both criticizing the defensive tactics of Red Bull’s brash Dutch teenager Max Verstappen as dangerous.
Luca Baldisseri, Ferrari’s former chief engineer who left the team after last season, caused a stir around Formula One before the US Grand Prix when he told Italian media that Ferrari leadership had created a “climate of fear.”
“They are no longer a team, but a group of frightened people,” Baldiserri said.
Ferrari team principal Maurizio Arrivabene dismisses external criticism.
“It’s an old story. Ferrari in Italy is like the Italian football national team. I think pressure is normal, having tension is normal, having criticism is normal, so you have to live with that. Then, sometimes it’s going too far,” Arrivabene said. “This is part of the job … if you work for a brand like Ferrari, you have to accept all of this, like it or not. The atmosphere inside the house is completely different to what people thought about, or what you are reading sometimes in the newspaper.” (AP)
