Formula One news: Ferrari can forget about victory in 2022, now they need to defend second

Another Formula One race has produced blunders by Ferrari, as the glamour Italian team finds ever more inventive ways to fail to deliver on its early season promise.

Ferrari can't take a trick recently.

Another weekend, another set of Ferrari blunders that have become all too common this year.

The season had started with them as genuine title contenders – the fastest car, a super-quick driver in Charles Leclerc and early wins to set themselves up as the ones to beat.

Red Bull had reliability issues and Max Verstappen failed to finish two of the first three races allowing Leclerc to open up a gap of 43 points in the championship.

How different the season looks now. Verstappen’s victory in Zandvoort, his fourth in a row and tenth from the past 15 races means that he now has an almost unassailable lead of 109 points with only seven races remaining.

Watch Every Practice, Qualifying & Race of the 2022 FIA Formula One World Championship™ Live on Kayo. New to Kayo? Start your free trial now >

Ferrari can't take a trick recently.

Ferrari’s woes are well documented, with reliability issues, strategy blunders and driver mistakes and yet the catalogue of problems keeps expanding, as it did on the Dutch coast at the weekend. During a Carlos Sainz pitstop only three of the four tyres were ready and then when he stopped again later in the race, he was released directly into the path of the Alpine of Fernando Alonso, for which he incurred a five-second penalty. While Leclerc’s day was mostly drama free, Ferrari had turned a second and third on the starting grid to third and eighth by the chequered flag.

Those early-season thoughts of Ferrari securing their first championship since 2008 have not only completely disappeared, they may now not even finish in the top two, with third-placed Mercedes ready to take advantage of any further slip-ups.

A pit stop to forget for Ferrari 😫#DutchGP#F1pic.twitter.com/9KEykCkHLD

— Formula 1 (@F1) September 4, 2022

Of course, no team want to finish second, but it’s better than third when the prize money is handed out at the end of the year and the difference in the places is worth millions.

Mercedes had a mixed race in Zandvoort, with George Russell securing a season’s-best finish of second, while Hamilton’s race unravelled after a late safety car during which he did not stop for fresh tyres but the other drivers behind him did, leaving him vulnerable when the race restarted and he dropped back from the lead to finish fourth.

However, they do appear to be getting on top of their early-season issues and have been making steady progress so that they now lie only 30 points behind Ferrari in the constructors’ standings.

The battle between these two teams is no doubt helping Verstappen in his bid to retain his title sooner rather than later, and though in reality he would still have won it this year with arguably the best car and driver combination on the grid, it may have just taken a bit longer than it now looks like it will.

For Ferrari, they cannot afford to keep making mistakes but Mattia Binotto, the team principal, has been adamant that there is no need for changes. Nico Rosberg, the 2016 Formula One world champion, was scathing of the Scuderia while working for Sky Sports F1 at the weekend, accusing them of being worse than teams in the juniors ranks.

“Mattia Binotto keeps saying ‘No, no, we don’t need to make any changes, everything is going well.’ When is the day coming?” Rosberg said via video link from his home. “It’s not possible – even Formula Two teams or F3 teams do a better job at their strategy and pitstops than Ferrari.

“You go to the pits and there’s no tyre there in a normal race? At some point they really need to start making some changes.”

Binotto was understandably unhappy with the comments when they were put to him and he defended his team, saying that he was more concerned about the pace of the car than the structure of the organisation and would not be changing personnel.

"We just know there's another mistake coming from Ferrari - and that's not good!"

Nico Rosberg says Ferrari need to make big changes in the personnel of the team pic.twitter.com/7EddfwmXGa

— Sky Sports F1 (@SkySportsF1) September 4, 2022

“First, I think it is so easy to speak when you are outside [of the paddock]. It is easy to criticise,” Binotto said. “But we will not change people: that is my answer to Rosberg. We have got great people and it has been proven that what is more important in sport is stability and that we make sure we are improving day by day and race by race.

“I’m pretty sure that we can be stronger in the future. So, I’m less concerned by that [the pitstop mistakes] than the pace of the car.”

Ferrari’s demise has robbed fans of a classic battle between two great teams and drivers. Now the fight has shifted to second place. With seven races remaining and with Mercedes pushing for their first win of the season, Ferrari can ill afford any more mishaps – it is not only points it could cost them, but millions of dollars.

This article originally appeared in The Times

Originally published as Formula One news: Ferrari can forget about victory in 2022, now they need to defend second