The Ferrari Formula One team has threatened to walk away from the F1 world championship at the end of this year if plans to introduce a limit on what teams are allowed to spend aren’t dropped. Max Mosley, the head of the sport’s governing body the FIA has said that Formula One can survive without the Italian team, and I agree with him.
We can live without these chaps, can't we?
You see, there’s a myth about Ferrari which I don’t believe stands up to close scrutiny. It’s true that it is the only team to have competed in the F1 world championship every year since its inception in 1950, but it has often done so in very mediocre fashion and by using bullying tactics.
Enzo Ferrari’s cars have not always delivered the goods and when they didn’t he always blamed the driver. The team were also renown for concentrating all their efforts on producing a powerful engine, which they usually did, but then neglecting the chassis in which it had to sit. The result was an often ill-handling car which the drivers struggled with but were still blamed for not winning races.
Ferrari himself was not a very nice man by all accounts. He played his drivers off against each other within the team, sometimes favouring one over another in order, he claimed, to get the most competitive spirit out of them. If they crashed, he was more concerned about whether the car could be repaired than if the hapless driver had lost his life.
He wasn't that nice really...
The team also developed a reputation for being a shambles. Latin temperament often got the better of good judgement and it wasn’t unusual to see them running around like headless chickens at a bungled pit-stop. But of course the driver got the blame.
During the 1980s and 90s they struggled. Until Michael Schumacher stepped up to the block, bringing with him the successful team that had guided him to two championships at Benetton, did things look up. When he claimed his first crown for the Scuderia in 2000, the previous Ferrari driver to take the title had been Jody Scheckter in 1979. That’s 19 long years without success. Schumacher then went on to win five more world driver’s championships for the team, but we have learnt recently that, during those years, Ferrari had an exclusive agreement with the FIA, allowing them to veto any rule changes they didn’t like. Or in other words, any which might favour their rivals over them.
These guys turned it all around
There had long been a belief within the F1 paddock that Ferrari was receiving preferential treatment of some sort. Now that has been confirmed. Stewards’ decisions always seemed to go in their favour, transgressions went unpunished and now we find out that they were receiving a greater slice of the prize fund than other teams, all in return for them supporting the FIA over any potentially controversial matter.
So how valid are those five titles of Schumacher’s? In my mind they will always be tainted.
And when Schumacher and the management team of Jean Todt, Ross Brawn and others left, the team reverted to its Keystone Cops routines. Witness some of this year’s decisions during qualifying when one of its drivers has failed to progress beyond the first session due to team incompetence.
2009 and a shambles
The team’s fans, the excitable Tifosi, have always remained faithful to their beloved Ferrari through thick and thin, and for that they should be commended. But it is my belief that no one team is bigger than the sport, even if they have been allowed to be so over the past few years. Ferrari has always produced good sports cars. Let it now return to sports car racing, in events such as the 24 hours of Le Mans, and leave Formula One behind. Because frankly, we can live without them.
