Drama as Ferrari contemplate moving F1 operations – Now in their longest drought without either Formula One championship, Ferrari face another year of failure and disappointment. Since the Scuderia won their last constructor’s championship, a year after Kimi Raikkonen pipped both Alonso and Hamilton by a point to the driver’s title, Brawn GP, Red Bull Racing, Mercedes and now McLaren have all enjoyed F1 glory.

Fred Vasseur is now in his third year as team principal and despite Ferrari having the quickest car come the final six races of 2024, their SF-25 is proving a huge disappointment. Big money signing Lewis Hamilton now languishes in sixth place in the drivers title race, a whopping 119 points behind championship leader Oscar Piastri.

Charles Leclerc, the teams favourite son, is faring little better, although he has claimed the team’s three podium finishes for the Italian team. Yet by round ten in 2024, the Scuderia had racked up two Grand Prix victories together with seven podium finishes but the decision to build an entirely new car for the final year of this current set of F1 car design regulations has spectacularly backfired.

 

 

 

Vasseur blames media for Ferrari failures

The Italian media are rightly incensed at yet another year of disappointment, something which appeared to irritate the team principal who implied in an FIA press conference in Canada that their persistent negativity was the reason Ferrari were in the state they are in.

Of course such a suggestion is nonsense, but it is an indicator of the extreme pressure Vasseur and Co. Are under to deliver results. Ferrari are the most successful F1 team in history, by some way, yet it appears their organisation remains in a time warp from yesteryear as the weight of history bears down on the collective of individuals who work in Maranello.

The team radio messages during the race weekends are laughable as both Hamilton and Leclerc regularly criticise the strategy they are given and unlike the sharp responses given by the race engineers in Mercedes, Red Bull and McLaren, Riccardo Adami, who is paired with Lewis Hamilton, and Bryan Bozzi, who works with Charles Leclerc sound like mere message boys who a working for some indecisive committee behind the scenes.

Such is the low ebb of morale and expectation, paddock whispers emerged during the last weekend in Montreal that Charles Leclerc who is contracted to the team until 2029, is exploring his options with other F1 teams. Lewis Hamilton, the new boy in town, was forced to issue an emotional vote of confidence in his boss as talk of Flavio Briatore being lined up to replace the Frenchman spread like wildfire.

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Recruitment to Italy, problematic

Having enjoyed almost a decade of success under the management of a Frenchman, Brit and German driver, the then Ferrari president decided the future of the team should consist of Italians, yet in a world where the top level motorsport talent is located primarily in the English shire counties recruiting the best of the best has proven a challenge even for the most iconic name in Formula One.

“It’s not the same situation,” he bemoaned to Sky’s Rachel Brooks at the 2023 Canadian Grand Prix. “You can move from Red Bull to Mercedes, keep the same hours, keep children in the same school and from the Friday to the Monday you can change and everything is perfect. If you want to come to Italy, it’s a different approach. You have to change the family environment and so on.”

And whilst under Vasseur, Ferrari have rung the changes in terms of certain personnel it very much feels as though its a case of one step forward and two steps back. Now the 2016 F1 drivers champion, Nico Rosberg, has revealed his sources are saying Ferrari is considering establishing a UK base for certain operations, which would align with itself with all the other teams with the exception of Sauber (soon to be Audi).

“So I’ve seen a little bit of inner workings there at Ferrari, and you can see that the level of excellence that they’re at is not comparable to the British teams, and especially to someone like Mercedes, in many areas, whether it goes from marketing, to other areas,” Rosberg said. “So you can just see there, the whole culture, the fact that they’re in Italy, it makes it a lot more difficult to them.”

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Rosberg critical of Ferrari organisational structure

His seven years at world champions Mercedes gives Rosberg an insight into how a winning team goes about its business and he highlights the confusion in the decision making process in Maranello as in stark contrast to the streamlined structure under Toto Wolff in Brackley.

“For example, at Mercedes, whenever Lewis had a thing, he would just go to Toto, and Toto would be able to make the decision, call the shot immediately, done,” he explained.“Whereas at Ferrari, there’s so many different decision-makers, and even Lewis doesn’t really know, ‘Okay, if I ask him, and he says yes and he does it, and the other guy still complains afterwards.’ It’s all a bit difficult there.”

Of course tapping Ito the vast talent in England’s ‘motorsports valley’ would increase the pool of skills available to Ferrari. “There’s a couple of ideas that I heard going round,” Rosberg adds. “I think Ferrari has been exploring to perhaps open a kind of subsidiary in the UK, because that’s where the F1 ecosystem is. So I’ve heard rumours that they’re also thinking about opening a subsidiary there.”

Clearly Ferrari considering a base in the UK smacks of desperation and Rosberg does not explain how this ‘subsidiary’ would improve the communication he highlights as the team’s biggest problem. Whoever is in England will still have to communicate with those in Italy and the fragmentation could even make matters worse.

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Radical: A move to England

Of course Haas F1 have their base in Banbury, England whilst maintaining a technical office in Maranello. Yet the is the reverse of what Ferrari would be attempting, with a mere satellite in England whilst the bulk of the work continues in Maranello.

The Racing Bulls established a UK base last season, with their fabrication and construction operations remaining in Faenza. Yet could Ferrari really move all the high level design work and racing operations to the UK, with Maranello remaining the location where all the grunt is performed?

For Mercedes the decision be be English based was simple, they bought the team from Ross Brawn which was already established in Brackley. Decades earlier Mercedes high performance powertrains had been established in Brixton, as they served English customer teams with a supply of engines.

A Ferrari base in the UK would certainly be a spectacular departure from the all Italian heritage it has maintained, but clearly something must give for the Scuderia to claim F1 glory once again.

 

 

 

 

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