Two years without a win: the Ferrari after competing with Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton for the world title in 2017 and 2018 with Sebastian Vettel as first driver and Kimi Raikkonen as luxury wingman in 2019, he saw the change of the guard at the Scuderia’s leadership level, with the technical director Mattia Binotto who also covered the position of team principal, succeeding Maurizio Arrivabene at the helm of the wall of the men in red. Also in 2019 he made his debut at the wheel of the Ferrari Charles Leclerc, a driver born in 1997 who grew up in the Ferrari Driver Academy under the watchful eyes of Massimo Rivola. The SF90 in 2019 posted three consecutive victories after the summer break, with Leclerc victorious at Spa and Monza and Vettel scoring in Singapore. The victory obtained in Marina Bay by the four-time German world champion is also the last one celebrated by Ferrari in F1. After the confidential agreement signed with the FIA and made official at the beginning of 2020, last season Ferrari saw the performance of its power unit drastically reduced, concluding only in sixth place in the Constructors’ standings.
In 2021, a partial recovery arrived, with the Cavallino returning to the podium in the ranking reserved for teams, without however registering stage victories unlike Alpine and McLaren, able to win in Hungary and Monza (even signing the only double in absolute of the season). René Arnoux, who in the past defended the colors of Ferrari from 1983 to 1985 – the year in which he only competed in the inaugural Brazilian Grand Prix at the wheel of the Red – by signing the 1983 Constructors’ Championship with Patrick Tambay, believes that the result caught in 2021 is however not worthy of the history of Ferrari: “Last year was bad, it wasn’t worthy of the best house in the world. Todt hated finishing second, he was ashamed, I wanted to race with him, I would have won a World Championship. You can’t finish third and be happy, you can’t take a second per lap “, said interviewed by The Gazzetta dello Sport.
Yet Arnoux points out that Ferrari has all the tools at its disposal to win. In 2022, the Frenchman hopes for a little more courage from the executives to challenge Mercedes and Red Bull: “To say that Ferrari will be competitive only because the regulation changes makes no sense. For three years there has been something wrong; the money is there, the team is a beauty, the competence in the factory is there, but without the right people in charge, things don’t work. If you don’t change at the top I don’t see how you can hope that the results will change. You have to go back to fighting with Verstappen and Hamilton, at the cost of breaking some engine ”.
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