Ferrari looks to shake curse at Japanese GP
Sebastian Vettel can be forgiven for thinking he’s cursed.
Just one month ago, the Ferrari ace was the toast of the town when he arrived at the Italian Grand Prix riding a seven-point lead over Mercedes nemesis Lewis Hamilton atop the Formula One drivers’ standings.
Vettel seemed on course to break Ferrari’s 20-year title drought, and the long-suffering tifosi turned out in record numbers to cheer on their hero on home soil at Monza. And then the wheels came off. Three races later, Vettel finds himself 34 points behind Hamilton, and it will be difficult to make up the lost ground in the remaining five events.
Suddenly, it appears to be a question of when — not if — Hamilton will secure his fourth drivers’ crown as F1 returns to action this weekend at the Japanese Grand Prix.
Vettel’s predicament follows a series of unfortunate events — perhaps the most bizarre involving Lance Stroll, the Montrealborn Williams team rookie.
Last week in Malaysia, Vettel and Stroll collided heavily on the track — not during the heat of battle, but during the cool-down lap after the checkered flag had waved.
If such a freak accident has happened in the history of F1, I don’t know about it.
Vettel blamed the rookie, saying he veered into his path, while Stroll indicated he was surprised the Ferrari came up so quickly from behind on what was supposed to be a crawl back to the pits.
“Just a very strange incident,” said the 18-year-old, and he was right. The stewards did not take action against either driver.
Fortunately for Vettel, it seems the heavy damage to the rear of his Ferrari will not require a change of gearbox for this weekend’s Grand Prix at Suzuka, which would have carried a five place grid penalty.
But the incident served as a cruel metaphor for Ferrari’s weekend as a whole. Vettel was forced to start the race from the back of the grid after being unable to take part in qualifying because of an engine problem.
Teammate Kimi Raikkonen qualified second, behind Hamilton, suggesting Ferrari had the pace to take the fight to Mercedes. But we’ll never know what Vettel could have done from the front.
As for Raikkonen, we’ll never know, either. Incredibly, his power unit, too, developed a fatal problem, and he was unable to start the race.
In the end, Vettel did well to finish fourth and limit the damage to his title hopes, as Hamilton came in second behind Red Bull’s Max Verstappen.
Stroll, too, put in a solid performance. He started 13th and
finished eighth, one spot ahead of teammate Felipe Massa. He’s 12th in the drivers’ standings, just one point behind the veteran from Brazil.
If that seems like a bad weekend for Ferrari, it was arguably better than the previous stop, in Singapore — a race the team had been expected to dominate.
There, in another surreal moment, the red cars committed the unpardonable transgression of colliding with each other in the run away from the start, ending both their races and allowing Hamilton to inherit an unexpected win.
The disaster in Singapore followed the disappointment in Monza, where Hamilton again spoiled the party with a dominant victory, leading teammate Valtteri Bottas to a 1-2 Mercedes triumph, while Vettel finished 40 seconds behind the leader in third.
The fall in fortunes was enough to cause Ferrari president Sergio Marchionne to blow a gasket, and we’re not referring here to engines.
In an uncharacteristic outburst, the normally calm capo refused to blame bad luck and instead pointed at his team, hinting at problems at the factory and a housecleaning to come.
“Yesterday, both Ferraris could have won the race,” Marchionne was quoted as saying. “That’s a fact. It could have also been the same at Singapore. That’s another fact.
“It’s also a fact that we’ve got some issues with our power units, because we have a young team, but also because the quality of the components is not at the right level for a race car.
“We are intervening and we are working on it.
“It’s almost fortunate we haven’t had that problem until the Malaysian GP.
“Now we’re working on the quality department and making some organizational changes.
“Having this kind of problem during the race make us angry.”
The anger, of course, is understandable. What’s surprising and worrying for Ferrari fans at this late stage of the championship is the revelation of entrenched problems.
In Suzuka, Ferrari technical director Mattia Binotto toned down the rhetoric, saying the team was focusing on improving quality control, something that had already been planned.
Vettel, too, tried to calm the waters.
“It is normal you try to understand things and it’s normal we have a shift in people,” he said. “But knowing what’s going on internally, there’s no panic, no big plans as a reaction.”
So that seems to take care of the crisis. But what about the curse?