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Getty Images A Ferrari comes in for a pit stop during the British Formula One Grand Prix at Silverstone in June.
For a brand whose identity is built on racing supremacy, it is a moral imperative to get back on top. Ferrari is the New York Yankees of F1, the team with the most titles, the most fans and the cockiest air about them. “You only have to glance at the grandstands to see that the prancing-horse banners are always the most numerous,” says team principal Stefano Domenicali. But Brawn GP, a more modestly financed team owned by former Ferrari technical director Ross Brawn, is well out in front this year, with Red Bull in second. Ferrari is virtually out of the running, leaving fans to wonder what’s gone wrong with the season.
“I think the fact that the top-four teams in 2008 are all going through a difficult year is already one answer to this question,” Mr. Domenicali says. “Ferrari, McLaren, BMW and Renault worked practically right up to the end of last season on developing that year’s car, inevitably sacrificing design time on the following year’s car. Having said that, one has to praise those like Brawn and Red Bull.”
Formula 1 racing is a far different game than America’s NASCAR, where the cars still use carburetors and weigh two and a half times as much as F1’s 1,334-pound open-wheel machines. F1 currently consists of 10 teams of two drivers each vying not only for a drivers’ championship but also for a constructors’ title, the honor given to the top car constructor.
“Part of the fascination of F1 is that the cars are so whiz-bang,” says Bob Varsha, an F1 announcer for Speed TV. “It’s a space race.”
The richest F1 teams spend upward of $300 million a season tweaking their cars and paying their drivers, who are considered the best on earth. Michael Schumacher, a former F1 champion with Ferrari, once commanded a $40 million annual salary, millions more than the Yankees’ Alex Rodriguez, whose $27.5 million average salary is the highest in Major League Baseball.
Leading the way has long been Ferrari, which has won the most drivers’ and constructors’ championships—15 and 16, respectively. Founded as Scuderia Ferrari (“scuderia” means “stable,” as in a stable or team of drivers), the firm initially focused just on racing cars. Mr. Ferrari only began selling them two decades later as a means to finance the racing—and in his view, the cars had to keep winning. Otherwise, as author A.J. Baime wrote in “Go Like Hell,” a book about Ferrari’s rivalry with Ford in the 1960s: “Why would a wealthy sportsman buy a Ferrari if a Jaguar had proved the finer machine on the track?”
As for the car business, Ferrari sales fell 10% in the first quarter of this year, after a 2% rise in 2008 over 2007.
“It is definitely the worldwide economic crisis which concerns us more,” says Dany Bahar, the head of Ferrari’s commercial and brand-development department. “The team knows what they have to do to improve the results of F1, and one year cannot delete a long winning history.”
This season, though, the finest machine is clearly the Brawn car, driven by Jenson Button, who has won six of the eight races so far. Brawn’s advantage was that its team, which bought out the struggling Honda Racing F1 team, got a head start preparing for 2009, while Ferrari was still focused late last year on winning the constructors’ crown. The new year, everyone knew, would feature the most dramatic rule changes in decades, which were largely aimed at making it easier for drivers to pass each other. (F1 races had become notorious for being largely static from start to finish.)
The pivotal change involved the cars’ aerodynamics—and ambiguity in the new rules. Three teams, including Brawn, used a different design for the diffuser, a device at the rear of the car that creates downforce, which other teams thought was illegal. This gives those cars greater stability. Ferrari and other teams protested, but F1’s governing body, the International Automobile Federation, ruled the design legal. And because of the new limitations on in-season testing, Ferrari admits, reworking the car to the point where it can overcome Brawn is more difficult than ever.
But critics also have faulted Ferrari’s race-day decisions and even the legendary Mr. Schumacher. At the Malaysian Grand Prix in April, Ferrari driver Felipe Massa had to start in 16th place because the team overestimated how well his qualifying times would compare to the rest of the field. Teammate Kimi Raikkonen’s showing was also compromised when the team switched him to tires for wet surfaces when the track was still mostly dry. Mr. Schumacher, a team adviser, was ripped by former F1 driver Marc Surer for the debacle, fueling speculation that the legendary figure won’t even be back with the team next season.
“I have to say that some comments, from those armchair experts or those who have no idea what goes on in the life of a team, have absolutely no value and do not even deserve a response,” says Mr. Domenicali. The team says it will address in coming weeks its future relationship with Mr. Schumacher, who couldn’t be reached for comment.
To be sure, Ferrari isn’t the only big F1 name having a rough season. McLaren (sixth), Renault (seventh) and BMW (eighth) are all well behind in the constructors’ race for much the same reason as Ferrari, which has improved in the past three races. Lewis Hamilton, the 24-year-old McLaren star who won the drivers’ championship last season, is in 11th this year. And Ferrari has been down before: The team went 15 years without a constructors’ title before its current run.
In a sense, F1 is getting its wish: The sport is becoming more competitive.
“It’s exciting,” says Dan Gurney, a former Ferrari F1 driver. “I don’t think fans like the racing to be predictable.”
But Ferrari bristles at the idea that F1 is better off with the prancing horse having been taken down a notch. “We would maintain that Formula One did not suffer from a lack of interest in the years in which Ferrari was the dominant force,” Mr. Domenicali says. “(But) the scene has changed. We have to get back in the game.”
Write to Darren Everson at darren.everson@wsj.com
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