Can Ferrari Finish the Season With Dignity?

With just two podium positions, Ferrari may finish the worst season in almost 40 years! However, the fourth place of Charles Leclerc last weekend, gives some small hopes to all the Scuderia Ferrari fans.

Since 2000, Ferrari has finished outside the top three, only in two seasons, 2009 and 2014. In 1980, arguably the worst year ever of Ferrari, the Italian red cars ended up the season in 10th position. Expect for the 1980 disaster, we need to go back to 1981 to see Ferrari finishing the season out of the top 4 racing teams.

Currently in sixth position in the World Constructors’ Championship, this is another Formula One season to forget for Scuderia Ferrari. Not only the car looks hopeless on every track, but also the mechanics and engineers seem to be clueless on what they need to fix. One of the most common lines mentioned by Mattia Binotto, head of Ferrari Racing, is, “There is something about the car that we do not understand”. Seriously?

If we compare the last two seasons, Ferrari dropped considerably in performances. In 2019, Ferrari finished in the second place (almost 90 points ahead of Red Bull) while this year is more than 130 points behind Red Bull. In only one year, there is a gap of more than 220 points between Red Bull and Ferrari. Formula One drivers’ championship is a pretty similar story. Max Verstappen is 87 points from Charles Leclerc. Better not to mention the performances of Sebastian Vettel…

However, despite a large part of the season is gone, Ferrari may still be able to complete the season with a bit of dignity and in Portugal we have seen some improvements. The fourth place of Charles Leclerc in Pontimao Formula One race may be a turning curve. In addition, the next race will take place not far from Maranello, where the Ferrari headquarter is located. Imola, the track where Ayrton Senna lost his life in 1994, may give the necessary motivation to the Ferrari team to conclude the year scoring additional points in order to try to remain among the top 3 racing teams of Formula One.

Ferrari team has worked hard over the last months and they introduced several upgrades on their cars. All those upgrades, which apparently are all focused on improving the downforce of the car and reduce the the turbulence of the airflow, still need to bring fruits and we cannot be happy for the 4th place in Portugal.

We expect more from Ferrari and we expect it in Imola, in casa Ferrari!