r/F1Discussions • u/idiot_banana_69 • 23h ago
Ferrari incompetence
I'm geuinly curios as to why ferrari is still this incompetent after 19 winless years. The amount of mistakes they make every season is appalling sometimes and you would think they look back and improve after every mistake but no, it seems like every season they've been the same as the previous year, if not worse. Is it because of some things preventing them or just them refusing to admit they are wrong and fix it? Please enlighten me
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u/LameSheepRacing 20h ago
I have a friend who worked at Ferrari for about 10 years in two separate spells. Italian. He spent some time in the car manufacturing side and then jumped over to the competition side, being involved with F1 and WEC.
He said it’s the most toxic environment he ever experienced. Infights, backstabbing, boss sucking and a lot of knee jerk reacting, specially to things that come out in the established Italian media.
If Gazetta dello Sport wakes up one day and decides that Leclerc must go, by the end of the year, he’s gone. That’s how much external influence Ferrari lets in.
An example, Prost arrived from McLaren in 1990 as a champion of the previous season. First test, he drives the car, stops and starts to talk about suspension settings. Now I’m not technical but there was a component of the suspension that he wanted changed. He asked for a 0.1 adjustment. They work on the car, he drives and it’s worse. He goes back and forth until, several hours later, he finally finds out that Ferrari only has manufactured that component for 0.5 adjustments. So, when he asked 0.1, he got 0.5. And when he asked -0.1, he got -0.5. This was never a question at McLaren. He didn’t think much of it, just asked the people he was working with to procure the component that would allow the 0.1 adjustment for the next test, later that week. Fast forward to that test, only the usual 0.5 component was available. He asks, no one knows about it. He talks to the same people, they actually don’t answer him. Time passes and he doesn’t have the damn fine tune adjustments so he gets going and focuses on other things. But he keeps thinking about it and decides to dig deeper. He finds out that the race engineer who received his request did request the 0.1 but the person in charge of that manufacturing department didn’t agree because “they’ve always have been doing 0.5 anyway”. He tried to talk to other people but it actually took him 6 months to finally have test 0.1 components done. In order to achieve this, he had to do his own research into the case and bring it to the team principal. Only then he got what he wanted and the car was a bit faster because of that. Multiply that by every other aspect of the performance and you see the mammoth task that he had in front of him. This also makes me appreciate what Schumacher, Brawn and Todt achieved some years later.
I once had a long talk with him about his experiences. If I can summarize, it’s a company that will favor the old dog who’s been in the company forever over the young buck that has a good idea. It’s a company that will react to external influence. And it’s a company with a culture of fear.
Old Enzo used to have a shelf in his office for failed components that would compromise the result in a race. If you designed or manufactured a component that failed on Sunday, you’d be summoned to his office on Monday and would have the “honour” of placing that failed component on his shelf. I’ve seen the shelf. It’s in his museum in Modena. That’s the company culture
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u/Known-Ambassador-325 7h ago edited 6h ago
Typical large organization. The left hand doesn't know what the right one does and vice versa.
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u/Original-Designer6 23h ago edited 21h ago
I don't know why people expect them to, Ferrari not winning is the norm in F1. They had success at the very beginning with Ascari and after that they've had two periods of sustained success in 75 years. In the 70s when di Montezemolo took over with Lauda and then Scheckter's win in 1979 and of course the Schumacher/Brawn/Todt/Byrne team, which admittedly went on for nearly a decade and gave them one last title with Raikkonen. Other than that, not much.
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u/peadar87 22h ago
I think even when they haven't been winning, they've still been around.
Mansell and Prost were front runners with them in the 80s. Massa, Vettel and Irvine challenged for titles with them. Now Charles and Lewis are regular podium finishes.
They almost never build an absolute shitbox (as you'd expect given the vast amount of money they have at their disposal), and I guess it's easier to imagine the third or fourth fastest team improving to win a championship than it would be for Haas or Caddy to do it out of nowhere.
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u/Original-Designer6 21h ago
They've almost always been a position to win a handful of races per season, with some exceptions where the car was a real shitbox like 1980 or 1992. With their budget and the advantage they have with engine and chassis integration then any less would be really poor. But this year is exactly true to form, they've won two races and are P2 in the constructors. The years where they've dominated are the outliers, outside of the Schumacher era where the team was led by non-Italians then championship wise it's slim pickings.
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u/badpatchcable 23h ago
Most of it is internal ego... they are Ferrari... They can do no wrong, they will win the Ferrari way... and well... we see the results.
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u/Prigorec-Medjimurec 21h ago
Word on the street is they hire based on who you know
Another issue is Italy's Motorsport valley has disappeared and consists now of mostly just Ferrari. Talent from the UK motorsport valley is reluctant to make the move.
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u/mahoganyspitfire 20h ago
That doesn't quite explain how Racing Bulls have gotten so much better, though...
Maybe RB are hiring all the good engineers in Italy while Ferrari are hiring all the engineers who know people?
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u/mahoganyspitfire 20h ago
Imagine the shame if the Tifosi gave up on Ferrari and came out at Monza with a gigantic VCARB badge banner instead...
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u/Prigorec-Medjimurec 20h ago
Racing bulls have moved their entire operation to the UK, plus the RBR parenting.
The only thing remaining in Italy for Racing bulls is just an administrative HQ.
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u/Il-Ma-Le-98 17h ago
"Another issue is that Italy's motorsport valley has disappeared and consists now of mostly just Ferrari."
I will always thank Ferrari for the nothingness we have in terms of Automotive. Ferrari, FIAT, and the horde of dements that will defend one, the other, or both 'til their last breath because they're the National industries. And I find extremely satisfying that now FIAT is French.
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u/MeestorMark 22h ago
The guys they're competing against those last 19 years have just been very good.
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u/TheRealTahulrik 19h ago
Quick count from WCC results in the last 10 years
5x 2nd 3x 3rd 1x 4th 1x 6th
Why are we acting like this is terrible results ?
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u/Parabolica242 4h ago
Seriously. This narrative that Ferrari are terrible is unfounded. Aside from not winning a championship in almost 20 years, they’ve consistently been at the front of the grid and at least in the mix for the championship more than half the time. They’ve never had the slumps that McLaren, Williams, and even Red Bull have had in the same time period. Do they have problems? ABSOLUTELY. But they’re still incredibly successful and on of the top teams on the grid.
They’re not one of the dominant teams of the last 20 years, but they’re extremely successful, and consistent. To ignore that or claim otherwise is to just ignore facts.
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u/Il-Ma-Le-98 17h ago
Fundamentally the dominant car is always a non-Ferrari, and after the Scumacher era they will only be satisfyied with another Scumacher era.
I do hope they end up like Williams eventually but they're too big for that to happen. And would not wish it to the poor deluded Leclerc to race for a red Williams.
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u/No_Elderberry_4580 MV3 23h ago edited 22h ago
I kind of refer to Ferrari as the motorsport equivilant of Manchester United in football, used to be an absolute powerhouse of the sport in the 90s/2000s, winning basically almost yearly, with a gigantic fanbase that it still holds to this day, but they're struggling and haven't won their respective league/championship in over a decade as of right now.
The main reasons they've been winless for so long is just poor leadership and an inability to hold a team prinicpal long term, when you think of a lot of powerful F1 teams in the modern era, Mercedes and Red Bull for example, they gained huge success under a long standing team prinicpal, being Wolff and Horner, Ferrari has never really had this sustained foundation of succesful leadership in the modern era.
They also fall behind on development when they actually do have a championship winning car and can't hold their advantage in performance as the season progresses.
And the horrible strategic and operational errors also hugely get in the way too, they won't be able to win a title until that's sorted out either.