How Ferrari missed its big chance to end a painful F1 wait

When Charles Leclerc built a 46-point gap over Max Verstappen after three races of the season, expectation soared in Maranello - only to deflate amid embarrassing capitulation that prompted the departure of team boss Mattia Binotto. Unreliability, strategy errors and driver errors all had their part to play as the team faced an unexpectedly close challenge to hold onto second in the constructors' standings

Matt Kew Dec 19, 2022, 10:18 AM

Ferrari has moved to replace its team principal with former Alfa Romeo boss Frederic Vasseur. That's how badly the wheels fell off its oh-so-promising title challenge. Perplexing strategy and the legacy of ruinous unreliability were the main culprits in a highly anticipated chess match giving way to a Red Bull monopoly.

The goalposts moved for the Prancing Horse when its svelte F1-75 initially came up trumps. It was lighter than its rivals out of the blocks. That agility paid off handsomely at lower speeds and enabled strong corner-exit driveability to fire it rapidly onto the straights to keep the Red Bull RB18 and its higher top speed at bay. Although the boardroom-level expectation had been for Ferrari to be a regular race winner in 2022, a victory for Charles Leclerc in Bahrain and his utter domination in Australia soon made it clear that there was capacity to dethrone Max Verstappen to end a Maranello title drought dating back to 2008.

Share Or Save This Story

Author Matt Kew

Matt Kew is Autosport's F1 Editor, a role he has held since March 2022 after stints covering Formula E, Extreme E and the British Touring Car Championship.

Matt joined Autosport in 2018 to work predominantly on the magazine, but his relentless quoting of Alan Partridge meant office colleagues soon thought he would be better suited to increased field work.

Needless to say, Matt had the last laugh when he won the Motorsport UK Young Journalist of the Year Award in 2019.

His interest in motorsport was sparked by regular trips to watch ASCAR crash around Rockingham's banked oval.

Matt read politics and philosophy at the University of Sheffield - receiving first-class honours for his dissertation assessing the lack of female participation in top-tier motor racing.

He covered a wide variety of national race and rally meetings for Autosport as a freelancer before joining full-time. His best efforts to argue the merits of historic racing is undone by a questionable taste in music and James Bond actors.