Ferrari’s torrid 2020 season labelled ‘a disaster’

Mark Scott
Ferrari

Ferrari-PA

F1 pundit and commentator Davide Valsecchi has said that Ferrari’s wretched 2020 campaign is nothing short of “a disaster”.

To borrow a line from Ferrari CEO Louis Camilleri, the Scuderia “are in a hole” but it is going to take years for them to climb out from it.

Ferrari are bogged down in sixth place in the Constructors’ Championship, with the SF1000 too draggy as it was made with the 2019 power unit in mind.

That power unit had to be changed due to a series of new Technical Directives issued at the end of last season which tied up a loophole that Ferrari was allegedly exploiting.

The details of the FIA’s official investigation into the engine were not made public.

Back to the here and now, Italian pundit Valsecchi has given an insight into what the feeling towards Ferrari is back in their native Italy.

“In Italy, everyone is pushing ‘Ferrari, Ferrari, Ferrari!’ and the only one that is winning at the moment is AlphaTauri, that is Italian!,” Valsecchi told the F1 Nation podcast.

“But Ferrari is not maintaining the level at the moment and I’m a bit disappointed about it.

“For them, it’s a disaster, because if you consider that you have one driver that is a four-time world champion [Sebastian Vettel] that at the moment is not delivering at all, the other one [Charles Leclerc] that is one of the biggest and greatest talents of the last 20 years in Formula 1, and sometimes is just magical, but most of the time [this season] is just normal because the car is too slow. It’s very disappointing.

“So at the moment, Ferrari’s a disaster, the car is not quick enough, plus they have mechanical issues often, so nothing is in the right place at the moment.”

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Ferrari were hopeful of improvement at Mugello after emerging from Spa and Monza with zero points and, while Tuscany represented a step in the right direction with both cars back in the top 10, the gloss was taken off somewhat by the fact that there were only 12 finishers.

“[After Spa and Monza] Ferrari were saying, ‘Now we’re going to Mugello, we’re very confident,’” Valsecchi added.

“So they go to Mugello and the only good things that you do in the racing weekend is the qualification lap of Leclerc, the fifth place.

“The rest was all bad, apart from the start where Leclerc took two positions, and was third after the first lap. But then it was a disaster, they were too slow on the straight, the degradation of Vettel was higher; Leclerc at the beginning, he defended a bit the position – but then he realised, there’s no way to race like this.

“[Raikkonen] was able to open the gap to Vettel in the last three laps and gain the five seconds to maintain ninth position – so they were slower than an Alfa Romeo with the same engine. It’s not the result that everyone was hoping for, so not a happy time at the moment.”

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