How Ferrari became its own worst enemy

While Lewis Hamilton was basking in the glory of his latest triumph last Sunday night - briefly delaying the start of his post-race media briefing to respond to a congratulatory SMS from Samuel L Jackson - at Ferrari, the disappointment was clear.

Maranello's much-criticised post-race declaration that "boredom was the biggest winner" smacked of the team being a sore loser. This was a weekend when again it had everything in its grasp to produce a thrilling fight for the win if it had got its act together, and it was outsmarted and outclassed by its main rival.

As Hamilton and Mercedes have grown stronger and stronger this year - showing peaks of team and driver "stardust" in Italy and Singapore - Ferrari has not capitalised on the brilliant technical package that Mattia Binotto's designers have created.

It did the most difficult bit for any F1 team and produced a super-fast and reliable car, then tripped up when it came to turning that potential into wins.

While the most public slip-ups have come through errors made by Sebastian Vettel - look at Baku, Paul Ricard, Hockenheim and Monza - of bigger concern now to the man in the cockpit is that the team seems to be falling away operationally.

The kind of strategy gaffs that Mercedes made earlier in the campaign - like miscalculating the VSC time in both Australia and Austria - are now rearing their head at a Ferrari team that has become a less cohesive unit as the pressure has increased.

More and more we are hearing little flashpoints of annoyance over the radio at what Vettel has repeatedly referred to as "wobbles".

In Belgium, he swore at Ferrari after returning to the pits as his car's floor was damaged in the hurry to get it turned around into the garage.

In Italy he was annoyed that the team had slightly misjudged his exit from the garage in Q3 so he couldn't pick up Hamilton's tow without compromising his out-lap preparations.

Singapore was far from smooth either. Ferrari's decision to try to get through to Q3 on the ultrasofts seemed optimistic at best, judging by the struggle Hamilton had trying to escape Q1 on the same tyres. But Vettel's belief that he could still do it and go half a second quicker than his first attempt was in contrast to Ferrari's insistence that it had to take the safe option and go for the hypersoft.

While Vettel was saying all the right things, his real feelings were probably very different

It was an unnecessary disruption to a session where getting a feel for car and tyre performance is essential - something the team was already on the backfoot for because of Vettel's Friday crash meant he was not out on track during the golden moments of second practice when conditions were most like qualifying.

Then Ferrari again appeared to mistime Vettel's track position for the Q3 runs. With his team thinking a flat out lap was the best way to prepare, getting stuck behind cars having a more leisurely preparation wasn't ideal in the first run - and it was something the German pointedly made clear.

Vettel had come on the radio between runs and said: "Try next time to get me a good out-lap and notice the Mercedes are a lot slower than us."

He duly got the clear run he wanted the second time out, but it was a messy lap; and none of the frontrunners managed to improve - although Max Verstappen of course was hit by his engine mapping problem.

In the race too you could sense frustrations between Vettel and the pitwall. Shortly after Ferrari remarkably misheard Hamilton's radio message about the condition of his tyres - telling Vettel his rival had said they "were not" in good condition when he had actually said they were in good condition - Ferrari rolled the dice and attempted an ultra aggressive undercut.

It failed; and worse than that, the time Vettel lost trying to get past Sergio Perez meant Verstappen was able to jump the Ferrari in the pitstops.

Vettel quickly realised that the team had messed up, not only with the timing of the stop and underestimating how good Hamilton's tyres were but in putting him on an ultrasoft tyre that he wasn't convinced would last until the end.

Vettel let rip over the radio: "No chance. We were again too late. These tyres will not make it to the end. Is there anybody else tight that I should know about before it's too late?"

He was able to hold on until the end, though, but the near 40-seconds gap to Hamilton at the chequered flag was seriously worrying given this was a race that Ferrari had come to expecting to win. And it probably had a car in its hands capable of doing that.

Vettel is not one for letting rip his frustrations too much in front of the media, but you could sense from his body language in the post-race press conference that while he was saying all the right things, his real feelings were probably very different.

"I will always defend the team," he said. "I think the decision we took in the race, the decisions to try to be aggressive, if it works it's great, today it didn't work. Obviously it didn't work by quite a bit and we need to look into that.

"If it doesn't work it is always easy to criticise but I will always defend what we did."

Ferrari has produced a siege mentality, which then forces team members to feel under more pressure and to become even more defensive

The chief difficulty Ferrari faces is that tightening up procedures amid the intensity and pressure of a grand prix weekend is a difficult thing to address in the short term.

If a car needs a front wing, the team goes off and designs it; how do you ingrain staff to instantly react better to stress or not let silly mistakes slip through the system?

Ferrari is a team that very much doesn't like outside scrutiny. It's shut itself off from the media (and therefore fans) because its management believes there is no benefit to be had in explaining things. It is hostile to the outside world, and in return gets little sympathy when things go wrong.

The sad inevitability of such a policy is that it produces a siege mentality, which then forces team members to feel under more pressure and to become even more defensive, and in doing so less open to accepting the need for change.

It is too easy for the obsession to be about what is going on in the outside world; rather than looking inwards and focusing on addressing weaknesses or pushing on and exploring your strengths.

Ferrari's declaration of "boredom" being the winner was a case in point; the team did not do a good enough job itself and yet it pointed fingers externally to try to find someone else to blame.

How much effort too has Ferrari wasted in trying to cover up its onboard camera on the grid this year - with first the cooling bag and now the new airbox device that appeared in Singapore last weekend?

While games like that are all part and parcel of F1, any resources spent on such a folly could have been spent getting its own procedures better, being the best and ensuring that mistakes don't happen.

Contrast Ferrari's focus outside with the way Hamilton pushes his own team to probe him in the bid to find more and be better themselves.

"I encourage them to ask me questions after the debrief and they dig deep and they find questions," said Hamilton. "The rapport, more than ever, the communication, has really been an addition, an improvement, I would say."

The need for Ferrari to look at itself was something that Vettel had been well aware of in the build up to Singapore, when he referenced the championship battle with Hamilton.

"We will be our first enemy and not him [Hamilton] as a person or them [Mercedes] as a team," he said. "We need to look after ourselves and if we do that then we have a good chance to do well, to win races and things look good."

The verdict from Singapore is that Ferrari is being dragged down by the very enemy within that Vettel has talked about. Now time is running out for it to get its house in order and stop another title slipping through its fingers.