Ferrari and McLaren Compete To Be Most Incompetent
The last decade has seen Ferrari and McLaren compete for championships in F1. Now Ferrari and McLaren only compete to be the most incompetent team in Formula One.
Formula One has always had a hierarchy of teams over the last twenty to thirty years. Ferrari and McLaren have gone through down periods, but they have arguably been the two main players in the sport during that time. This has been particularly true during the last three years. Now, both teams are mere shadows of themselves. Let’s take a close look at how each has fallen.
McLaren
McLaren went through a very rough patch in the first half of this decade. Simply put, they were not competitive compared to Ferrari. Then they brought Fernando Alonso in and the “Stepneygate” saga occurred. Suddenly, the car was very competitive and rookie driver Lewis Hamilton was all the rage. He would choke away the 2007 crown, but pulled off the trick in 2008.
Many have viewed McLaren’s run of success with a skeptical eye. The fact the team was accused of cheating and paid a $100 million fine was one reason. If you can’t beat them, steal their technical data! McLaren backers claimed it was all politics, but those claims seem dubious now that the team has again been caught in a direct lie with the stewards in Australia.
The fact the new car is horribly slow raises more questions about the competence of McLaren. The team has traditionally been poor at launching cars. The fact that Fernando Alonso is not with the team makes things worse. Alonso is a smug one, but he is undeniably the best at developing cars in the circuit. It was no coincidence that an uncompetitive McLaren suddenly became a challenge to Ferrari after Alonso came aboard.
McLaren has no Alonso, a terrible design team and has been caught lying directly to track officials. It has been a bad season and the team shows no signs of being able to recover. While 2009 looks like a lost cause, at least McLaren can plan for 2010 with some hope if it focuses and gets its act together. The same cannot be said for Ferrari
Ferrari
Ferrari was a dynasty in the early and mid part of this decade. Michael Schumacher, Rory Byrne, Ross Brawn, Jean Todt…it was a perfect storm of brilliance. Now? None are left with the exception of “consultant” Schumacher who allegedly is being paid not to take a seat with another team. It is a shame since the team has fallen apart.
The 2007 and 2008 Ferrari teams were a bit of a fraud. They won championships, but primarily because the cars were simply an extension of the previous cars of the late Schumacher era. 2009 called for a new design and we can all see how that is working out. The car is uncompetitive and the team is falling apart as the strategy being used is staggeringly bad.
The demise of Ferrari is more serious than McLaren. The current design, engineering and management team is simply a disaster. Two races into 2009 and Ferrari has no points. NONE! The failure to get Massa into Q2 at Malaysia tells you everything you need to know about where this team is and where it is going…the toilet!
The Ferrari team was a joke before Michael Schumacher appeared on the scene. The team is returning to that lowly level of performance. The President of Ferrari must act quickly. The only hope is to jettison the slag running the team now, bring in fresh faces and sign Fernando Alonso. Alonso may be an ego maniac, but like Schumacher, he can develop a car and bring along talent to work with. Any move other than this will result in the Ferrari team moving to the rear of the grid and a complete unwinding of the improvements seen under Schumacher.
Which team is in worse shape? Well, both are disasters. As a betting man, I would suggest McLaren has the better prospects. McLaren has a bad car and Heikki is a joke as a driver, but they do have Hamilton. Ferrari is showing signs of a systematic breakdown that will take years to recover from. That is particularly painful for Ferrari fans to acknowledge as they watch Brawn GP rack up wins.
Lemmy