IN THAT ALTERNATIVEHISTORY,
Vettel could conceivably have gone to the Mexican Grand Prix leading the championship by around 30 points, rather than trailing Lewis Hamilton by 66. Even taking out the driver errors and just focusing on the reliability issues, Vettel would have been within one win of Hamilton and the title would still have been a realistic ambition.
There, in raw numbers, is the scale of Ferrari’s failure in 2017, the cataclysmic nature of the way they have shot themselves in the foot, and thrown away their best chance of winning the championship for the first time in nearly ten years. On one level, it demonstrates the gulf between Ferrari and Mercedes: how far the Scuderia have still to travel before they win another title. But on another it shows something else – how much progress they have made since last year, and, by extension, how close, paradoxically, they are to achieving their ambition.
The changes rung by president Sergio Marchionne over the summer of 2016, the restructuring of the team to enable creativity and inspiration to come to the fore, have worked. Not only have Ferrari produced their first genuinely competitive car since 2008 – arguably the best car this year, and certainly the most flexible, user-friendly and consistent – but they have proved capable of developing it, too, to keep pace with Mercedes.
Even more than that, when governing body the FIA acted to close off some of the more controversial design avenues on the car in the early summer, Ferrari were able to find ways to overcome the deficit and, one weak race at Silverstone aside, not lose any ground. FIA clarifications affected the engine (by restricting the burning of oil as fuel, as a way to reduce detonation in these turbo hybrid engines and therefore increase power) and the aerodynamics (by forcing Ferrari to make the edge of the floor in front of the rear wheels more rigid). But Ferrari made the changes and bounced back, continuing almost as if nothing had happened.
Vettel cut a disconsolate figure after the race in Austin, Texas, where Hamilton’s dominant victory came as a nasty surprise to Ferrari and put what looked to be the final nail in the coffin of their title hopes. Yet when he spoke with optimism before the race about Ferrari’s progress in 2017, Vettel did so with good reason.
“Overall, it has been so far a very good season,” he said. “Obviously you always judge depending on the last couple of races. They were not so good but overall we are the team that made the most progress. Everyone expected Red Bull to be very strong this year. As a fact, they were not, especially in the beginning. It was a given that Mercedes would be strong. They are. But nobody expected us to be as strong as we are. There are plenty of positives.”
The key question now is whether Ferrari can pick themselves up again and continue their progress into 2018, rather than slipping back into the bad habits of the old days. Vettel strikes a hopeful note. “I don’t see why not,” he says. “We are still growing. We are still improving. There is still massive potential that has not been unleashed completely, so it is up to us and the people in charge to make sure, but overall I think things are heading in the right way. We have very clever people on board. There is a lot of stuff happening, a lot of good ideas for the future, so overall the direction is the right one, but we want to make bigger steps obviously.”
There is an alternative future to 2017, though, just as there is an alternative history. What if Ferrari build on the positives of this year? What if, instead, they fall back into the old culture of victim-blaming and blood-letting? What if they can’t stop themselves snatching defeat from the
jaws of victory, which has been the story of the past eight years on the rare occasions they have been in with a shot of the title?
In 2010, Ferrari driver Fernando Alonso looked as if he could not lose the world championship when he went to the final race in the lead, needing only fourth place to clinch it. But then followed the inexcusable strategy error that left him stuck behind Vitaly Petrov’s rocketship Renault and let Vettel sneak in to clinch the title.
Alonso’s agonising failure in 2012 was down to bad luck. Even with the third or fourth best car on the grid, he would have walked the title had his Ferrari not been taken out at the start of the Belgian Grand Prix by Romain Grosjean’s Lotus and in Japan by Grosjean’s team-mate, Kimi Räikkönen. But it might well have been easier had Ferrari not sacked their technical director Aldo Costa – now at Mercedes – after a slow start to 2011, and then completely redesigned their car for 2012.
This upheaval left them scrabbling to make up ground when they were woefully uncompetitive at the start of the year, rather than simply developing their 2011 car, as Red Bull did. After all, Alonso’s victory in the 2011 British GP proved there was nothing wrong with that car other than Ferrari’s inability to make that season’s exhaust-blown diffuser technology – which was banned for one race at Silverstone – work effectively.
Ferrari have a history of allowing their blame culture to undermine the stability that is the key to maintaining competitiveness. But Marchionne is now making the right noises, suggesting that Ferrari have learned from the mistakes of the past. In Austin, he responded to growing speculation that team principal Maurizio Arrivabene is to be ousted at the end of the year and replaced by technical director Mattia Binotto by saying: “Both Mattia and Maurizio have been involved in this process. Picking one or the other is a bit idiotic.”
“There has been a collection of the most unfortunate events. With the exception of the technical failures we’ve had, which are quality driven, everything else was just a fluke and it happened. The likelihood of us repeating those errors is hopefully very small” Sergio Marchionne
“That’s not going to solve the issue,” he added. “We need to win. That’s the more important thing. I don’t think it’s attributable to a single guy.”
Marchionne describes the team’s implosion at the Asian races this year as “a collection of the most unfortunate events. With the exception of the technical failures we’ve had, which are quality driven, everything else was just a fluke and it happened. The likelihood of us repeating those errors is hopefully very small. We’ve made one change to the organisation by bringing in someone who’s got experience on the quality side to try and strengthen our skills. The rest of it, I think, is within the way we manage. I think we’ll be all right. I don’t think we need to overhaul the team, I don’t think we need to make changes.
“This team knows how to win and knows how to get it done. Just give them the space.”
Iron out the errors, cut out the politics, and Ferrari have everything they need to win. This year has proved it. Take that one final step and the title could be theirs. It’s in their hands.