Ferrari being the most successful team in Formula 1 is no mean feat, winning a single world championship is difficult enough but winning multiple against many different greatly respected teams is a triumphant achievement. The Golden Era with Michael Schumacher, Ross Brawn, and Jean Todt will stand the test of time and is a constant barometer to any team who enters Formula 1 eying championships.
However, I am not a huge Ferrari fan, I respect their achievements as everyone should do but their shady dealings in the current era have put that into question for me. Everyone within and outside Formula 1 constantly repeat the phrase ‘Formula 1 needs Ferrari and Ferrari needs Formula 1’. To me this statement is complicated to understand, because Ferrari is more than just a Formula 1 team, it represents a nation of incredibly passionate fans who would rather die than support another team. In another sense, it is a business/brand worth millions of euros aligning itself with a sport; which can provide the sport more vindication and status. Consequently, I understand that part of the statement as it is only a positive for each brand to work in harmony with each other, it can only propel the sport and brand too higher heights; economically and socially. On the other hand, it is difficult to understand the disproportionate importance of Ferrari to Formula 1, because in other world sports there is no other equivalent. In the English Premier League, there is no one team bigger than the sport itself.
This does provide one answer to my many questions regarding exactly why ‘Formula 1 needs Ferrari and Ferrari needs Formula 1’ because Formula 1 is a unique sport. We have teams with two drivers who compete to win for the same team but there is only one winner, so teammates are rivals. To my knowledge, there is no other sport on Earth with that type of duality. Other sports have individuals of course but they compete together as a team and win together. F1 teammates win the World Constructors Championship for their team but compete tooth and nail against each other for the World Drivers Championship. Providing a possible answer as to why Ferrari have gained their status of a racing team which is in fact a national racing team, a unique aspect to a unique sport.
Ferrari’s tight relationship with the FIA is one aspect I do not like or fully understand in terms of the ‘Formula 1 needs Ferrari and Ferrari needs Formula 1’ statement. Yes, they are important but being important to a world championship is one thing, having a shady relationship with a governing body is another thing entirely. Ferrari, of course, being the only team to have a veto when it comes to decisions regarding the sport.
If we take a short at the past, we can see times when the FIA has brought the hammer down onto teams that were deemed to have broken to rules, Haas’s driving aids at the Hungarian Grand Prix in 2020, Renault’s brake-bias driving aid during the Japanese Grand Prix in 2019, Renault’s ‘crash-gate’ in Singapore 2008 and none bigger than the McLaren ‘spy-gate’ of 2007-08; where McLaren were found guilty of espionage and members being in possession of technical drawings of a Ferrari car. The FIA, then run by Max Mosley, who was not shy of stating his issues with Ron Dennis, came down hard on McLaren but not Renault who were also found guilty of having technical drawings of Ferrari. The very public spy-gate saga cost McLaren 100 million dollars, World Constructor Championship points for the 2007 season and made one of the sports icons, Ron Dennis, re-evaluate his passion for the sport.
This shows the FIA are not afraid of handing down punishments especially when there is evidence proving without doubt that a team broke the rules which they have set.
So, when in early February of this year the FIA came out with a statement that they have come to a ‘confidential settlement’ with Ferrari with regards to its ‘running of its power-unit last season’, shocking not only just fans but teams as well. You can say it is rather shady in how they have dealt with Ferrari in comparison with say McLaren. Yes, I am not an FIA technical delegate, therefore, everything I discuss is totally theoretical and speculative so take this with a pinch of salt.
Let’s just start with the facts we have, in 2019 Ferrari had a clear advantage of the straights and high-speed corners in which no one could match; constantly being at the top of speed traps.
In 2018, Ferrari were investigated for how they use their ERS in Monaco, but nothing was found to be illegal.
Moving onto the middle of the 2019 season, Charles Leclerc won the Italian Grand Prix even with two works Mercedes on full boar, slipstream and DRS behind him. This is something no one would have thought of at the beginning on the year, Mercedes have had the better power-unit every season, except it seemed in 2019. The works Ferrari’s were estimated to have somehow gained 60BHP over their rivals as stated by a rival team manager.
The mumblings started to speculate reasons why they had achieved this throughout the paddock. Around the 2019 US Grand Prix, Red Bull Racing had put in a request for a technical directive in regard to the fuel flow sensor. This directive suggested, if a team were able to go over the maximum fuel flow allowed by the rules by tricking the sensor, is it legal. The FIA came back and stated this was not legal and they would be installing another FIA sealed sensor to check fuel flow rates. Suddenly, Ferrari’s straight-line and high-speed cornering advantages vanishes. If Ferrari were tricking the fuel flow sensor and using more fuel than they were supposed to then they would have to fill the car up more than the permitted 100KG per race distance. Before the final race at the 2019 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, the FIA seize the Ferrari Power Unit for further investigation. At the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, the FIA measure the amount of fuel in Charles Leclerc’s car and find a difference of 4.88KG between theirs and Ferrari’s declaration. Now we don’t know if the 4KG was more or less than what Ferrari declared. But if we go on the fact that Ferrari were using more fuel to get the advantage as suggested by the fuel flow directive then it could have been more fuel in the Ferrari than the allowed 100KG.
This part is the speculation part, as this directive came out and the FIA had placed a further sensor regarding fuel flow rates, Ferrari were unable to trick the system and use up the fuel and gain the advantage they previously had, which brings up the question had they forgotten to input less fuel than they previously had done. Now, this even to me is quite ludicrous, because how can a Formula 1 team, especially Ferrari, just forget something. Either way, they were fined 50,000 dollars which does state the FIA are not afraid of handing down punishments to Ferrari.
Now with all the facts that we can gather without being a Ferrari power-unit designer or an FIA delegate, we can begin to decipher the ‘not-that-big-of-a-deal’ confidential settlement with a further statement from the FIA;
“The FIA was not fully satisfied… but decided that further action would not necessarily result in a conclusive case due to the complexity of the matter and the material impossibility to provide the unequivocal evidence of a breach. …To avoid the negative consequences that a long litigation would entail, especially in light of the uncertainty of the outcome of such litigations and in the best interest of the championship and of its stakeholders”.
The fact the technical directive not only affected Ferrari at the end of 2019 but also continued to harm them further into the delayed start of the 2020 season, can only provide more evidence to the fact that Ferrari did have an illegal engine and had to change designs to make it a legal design. Supporting this theory is the downturn in performance by all Ferrari-powered teams, Alfa Romeo and Haas. Three Formula 1 teams do not simply just drop the ball there is always a cause – this time they are all Ferrari-powered. Yes, you can argue it may be aerodynamics or car set-up but that doesn’t provide all the answers, the straight-line performance by all Ferrari-powered teams have been at the bottom of the speed traps at the both of the Austrian Grand Prix weekends.
So, my question to you, the FIA, and the sport, is, where is the accountability of a governing body supposedly requiring every team to adhere to same set of rules and consequences; where is the true justification in stating you are not fully satisfied with a team’s ability to compete within the rules of a world sport but are not willing to pursue it further. Why are you not holding this historic team to the same standards you have to the other teams?
This statement regarding the settlement just provides more questions than answers and a governing body is meant to know the answers, but it doesn’t always have to publicly tell you them but always has to know them. Judging by the response from the teams up and down the grid, they clearly don’t know or are not willing to share for reasons only the people in power know.
As an extremely passionate Formula 1 fan, I would never expect everything to be perfect and have answers for every single thing but when a wrong is clearly defined and “partially” publicly stated with no tangible justice being served; you cannot help but feel as if the sport itself has been treated badly, not only just the teams and fans.
References:
Collantine, K & Rencken, D (2020). FIA-Ferrari engine deal “does nothing but promote suspicion”. RaceFans. Retrieved 21 July 2020, from https://www.racefans.net/2020/07/03/fia-ferrari-engine-settlement-does-nothing-but-promote-suspicion/
Edmondson, L. (2020). Rival teams still unhappy with Ferrari/FIA settlement. Retrieved 21 July 2020, from https://www.espn.co.uk/f1/story/_/id/29408754/rival-teams-unhappy-ferrari-engine-settlement-fia
FIA. (2020). FIA concludes analysis of Scuderia Ferrari Formula 1 Power Unit. Retrieved 21 July 2020, from https://www.fia.com/news/fia-concludes-analysis-scuderia-ferrari-formula-1-power-unit
Hughes, M. (2020). FIA introduces Ferrari-suggested F1 engine clampdowns. Retrieved 21 July 2020, from https://the-race.com/formula-1/fia-introduces-ferrari-suggested-f1-engine-clampdowns/
Hughes, M. (2020). Mark Hughes: FIA’s Ferrari engine row is now a pantomime. Retrieved 21 July 2020, from https://the-race.com/formula-1/mark-hughes-fias-ferrari-engine-row-is-now-a-pantomime/
Richards, G. (2020). FIA says it could not prove Ferrari’s engine operated outside rules in 2019. Retrieved 21 July 2020, from https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/mar/05/fia-says-it-could-not-prove-ferraris-engine-operated-outside-rules-in-2019
Hello! Welcome to Jack's Blog! 
I’m not sure in which you are getting your data, but good topic.