The Myth of Maranello: Does Ferrari’s Legacy Status Hurt or Help the Team?
It’s almost like beating a dead prancing horse. Other teams on the grid will have a subpar weekend, they’ll own their mistakes in the media, grovel in front of fans, and even point fingers at anyone but themselves. However, ignoring the team’s problems entirely? That’s a move only Ferrari has been known to pull. This weekend in Miami was no different.
After coming a close runner-up to McLaren in the Constructors’ Championship at the end of 2024, fans and pundits alike believed Ferrari to be a clear frontrunner for 2025. Plus, with a driver lineup composed of seven-time World Champion Lewis Hamilton and the strong talent of Charles Leclerc, a podium finish every weekend was the expectation for the Italian team. However, Ferrari is currently standing fourth in the Constructors’ Championship at the moment, 11 points behind Red Bull Racing. Now, with a quarter of the 2025 season already flown by, the question remains: How did this happen, and can Ferrari turn it around?
Scuderia Ferrari has a very, very bad habit. Dubbed “the Myth of Maranello,” Ferrari has been known to brush team-wide issues under the rug and rely on their venerated history and status as a “legacy team.” We see this with current team principal Fred Vasseur’s attitude towards the media in recent weeks. After a messy team order swap during this weekend’s Miami Grand Prix, which potentially could have cost the team a podium finish, Vasseur still believed his pit wall was in the right. “If you don't ask them to swap, they don't overtake. If you ask them to swap, it's because we think that the second car is faster than the first one at that stage of the race. We try to catch up to the guy who is in front, and if we don't do it, we swap back to respect the initial position at the stage of the race when it was clear that we wouldn't be able to fight Antonelli with Lewis,” Vasseur told The Race.
Both the team’s drivers have been more emphatic, however. In the cockpit, Hamilton was quippy, telling the engineers to “have a tea break while you’re at it” during the team order swap decision. Leclerc seemed frustrated, too. “I’m not going to comment too much, but it’s obvious today was not the way we want to manage the race,” he said in a post-race interview. With only a sprint win and a podium, and one Grand Prix podium to show for the first quarter of the season, it seems like Ferrari will need to stop looking at its formidable history, and start securing their future if they want any chance at beating McLaren, Mercedes, and Red Bull this year.
