The spectacular peaks and troughs of Ferrari's cyclical history

Ferrari has won 238 world championship grands prix, scored 228 poles, taken 15 drivers' titles and 16 constructors' crowns. All of those are records and the legendary Italian squad, which celebrates 1000 starts at this weekend's Tuscan Grand Prix, is undoubtedly the most famous Formula 1 team.

It's produced some of the most successful, attractive and iconic cars - and its time in F1 dates back to before the world championship began 70 years ago. But Ferrari's history is as much about the failures - some heroic, some not so heroic - as it is about the successes.

In fact, you could argue that, given its resources, history and ability to attract the best drivers, Ferrari has underperformed more often than not.

Now seemed like a good time to really delve into the high peaks and low troughs of the team that most consider the most important in F1. When was it at its best - and when was it at its worst?

Aside from the usual criteria, such as wins and titles, we've dug deeper to look at the supertimes. Supertimes are based on the fastest single lap by each car at each race weekend, expressed as a percentage of the fastest single lap overall (100.000%) and averaged over the season.

As we have pointed out before, because they are based on the best lap time of a weekend (which usually means qualifying), supertimes don't give a complete picture of a car's competitiveness, in terms of race pace or reliability for example. But it does give a good indication of how the raw pace of the cars stacks up against one another season-by-season.

PLUS: When was Formula 1 closest?

For this piece we have calculated how far off Ferrari has been from the fastest team in F1 each season or, in years when the Scuderia has been quickest, how far ahead it has been.

Given the domination of the Alfa Romeo team and the fact that Ferrari did not enter works cars at all the rounds, it is perhaps not surprising that it was well off the pace in 1950. But it was still the second quickest marque and, having produced the cars to beat in 1949 - in the absence of Alfa Romeo - it was not a surprise when Ferrari challenged Alfa the following year.

The unsupercharged 4.5-litre 375 model wasn't always quite as fast as the supercharged 1.5-litre Alfa, but it was close enough to make its better fuel mileage and need to make fewer stops count. Ferrari won three of the last four races of the 1951 championship and Alberto Ascari might have been world champion had a team decision to change wheel/tyre sizes not handed the crown to Alfa's Juan Manuel Fangio.

Nevertheless, Ferrari was in the ascendancy and Alfa Romeo withdrew from F1. With the BRM project continuing to prove a disaster, the world championship was switched to the unsupercharged two-litre Formula 2 regulations for 1952-53.

Ferrari fell to fourth - behind Mercedes, Lancia and Maserati - in 1955, 1.809% off the pace, but two key events turned that into a similar advantage the following season

With limited and often poorly funded opposition, the 500 model - and Ascari in particular - dominated, with 1952 being Ferrari's most dominant year, 3.682% clear of Gordini. In other words, the fastest Ferrari relative to the opposition in 'F1' history was, in fact, an F2 car...

After Ascari took two drivers' titles, the world championship returned to F1 for 1954 with the 2.5-litre unsupercharged engine regulations. Ferrari's form took a slump, the 625 and 553 models proving slower than the Mercedes W196 and, when it appeared at the end of the season, Lancia's D50.

Ferrari fell to fourth - behind Mercedes, Lancia and Maserati - in 1955, 1.809% off the pace, but two key events turned that into a similar advantage the following season. Mercedes withdrew from motorsport at the end of the year, following the Le Mans disaster, and Lancia handed the D50s over to Enzo Ferrari for 1956.

Fangio romped to the title that year, with Maserati's Stirling Moss the only non-Ferrari driver to win a world championship GP.

The reworked 801 fell to third, 1.458% off Maserati, in 1957 and Ferrari failed to win a points-paying event, but it was still in the game in the late 1950s thanks to the Vittorio Jano/Carlo Chiti-designed 246 Dino. Mike Hawthorn took Ferrari's fourth drivers' crown in 1958, even though the pacesetting Vanwall team won the inaugural constructors' title.

Ferrari was still competitive, at least on fast tracks, in 1959, but the rear-engined revolution was now under way and Enzo was reluctant to follow the trend. This has been something of a theme in Ferrari's F1 history - rarely a chassis innovator, it has tended to be successful via other means, such as engine performance, perhaps a sobering thought for fans given the 2020 car's drawbacks.

What Ferrari has been good at on occasion has been preparing for new rules, perhaps helped by its resources. When F1 switched from 2.5-litre engines to 1500cc powerplants, the British teams - in particular Cooper, Lotus and BRM that had left Ferrari floundering in 1960 - were unprepared. It was almost the end of the 1961 season before Climax had a suitably powerful engine to offer them, while Ferrari had run its 1.5-litre engine in F2 the year before.

Ferrari won every world championship round barring two masterclass performances from Moss - at Monaco and the Nurburgring - and the finale it skipped. Spurred on by the intra-team rivalry between Phil Hill and Wolfgang von Trips, it took both titles, albeit marred by von Trips' death at Monza.

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But the British teams, notably Lotus and BRM, were still ahead in terms of chassis development, particularly when Colin Chapman introduced the monocoque Lotus 25. With better V8 power in 1962, Lotus moved back ahead of Ferrari, which suffered a major walkout of technical staff.

From being 1.060% clear of the rest in the first year of the new formula, Ferrari was fifth, 2.131% behind, in 1962. But with John Surtees and designer Mauro Forghieri on board, Ferrari soon recovered and was competitive for the next four seasons.

Surtees took his first win in the 1963 German GP and Ferrari had the second-best car in terms of raw speed behind Jim Clark's dominant Lotus 25, even though an inconsistent campaign left it fourth in the constructors' table.

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The 1964 season was incredibly close - both in terms of sheer speed, with 0.422% covering the top four teams, and in real results. Surtees and Ferrari took both titles in a dramatic Mexican finale with Forghieri's 158. The combination was a close third on pace again in 1965, but the reliability wasn't there and the pacesetting Lotus of Clark was more dependable, resulting in a comfortable second crown for the Scot.

There was another engine change for 1966, the 'return to power' bringing three-litre engines. Ferrari again looked like being the main beneficiary and held an average pace advantage of 0.561% with the 312.

Without Surtees, Ferrari was still quick but didn't possess a driver with championship-challenging experience

Surtees maintained that the car was not as powerful as many thought, but did win the Belgian GP. That was his last start for the team, though, as he walked out following a spat with team manager Eugenio Dragoni at Le Mans.

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Without Surtees, Ferrari was still quick but didn't possess a driver with championship-challenging experience. The team should have won the French GP at Reims, but was outmanoeuvred by Jack Brabham, which summed up its season. Ludovico Scarfiotti led a Ferrari 1-2 at Monza, but the reliable and consistent Brabham took both the drivers' and constructors' titles. That Surtees, having switched to Cooper, finished second in the drivers' table was telling.

The arrival of the Lotus 49 and the Cosworth DFV left Ferrari trailing 1.509% off the pace in 1967, but it bounced back - performance-wise, at least - in 1968. The 312 was, on average, 0.688% clear, but poor reliability at crucial moments, notably for the famously unlucky Chris Amon in Spain and Canada, proved costly. In truth, Jackie Stewart (Matra) and eventual champion Graham Hill (Lotus) led more laps than Amon, so a title might have been a stretch anyway.

The 1969 312 fell to fifth on the raw pace charts, but Forghieri's flat-12-engined 312B and its evolutions kept Ferrari in the game for the next three seasons. Ferrari was second quickest in 1970 (0.258% adrift) and 1971 (0.343%), with Jacky Ickx finishing second (to posthumously-crowned 1970 champion Jochen Rindt) and fourth in the drivers' standings.

It was fastest (by 0.156%) on raw pace in 1972, but in real terms the Lotus 72 was a better and more reliable racing car as Ickx again finished fourth.

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A generous way to describe Ferrari's 1973 campaign would be 'transitional season'. The 312B3 was Ferrari's first full monocoque F1 machine, and the team had to get used to a switch from Firestone to Goodyear rubber.

The car was slow and struggled to score points, leaving Ferrari 1.808% off the pace in seventh, and it finished sixth in the constructors' table. It was a disastrous campaign, despite plenty of revisions to the car, but during the year a young Luca di Montezemolo had been brought on the scene and Forghieri was brought back.

The 1974 312B3 was a semi-monocoque car, as Ferrari returned to what it knew, and with Niki Lauda and Clay Regazzoni both joining from BRM the car set the pace. It was 0.716% quicker than the opposition - one of F1's most remarkable turnarounds - and only a combination of bad luck and dubious reliability meant Ferrari narrowly missed out on both titles to Emerson Fittipaldi and McLaren.

Interestingly, of the six fastest cars that have failed to win a title (neither the drivers' nor the constructors') in their pacesetting season, Ferrari produced four. The Lotus 49 in 1967 (won by Brabham's Denny Hulme) and the Renault RE30B in 1982 (won by Keke Rosberg for Williams) take the top spots, but the next four 'fast failures' are Ferraris, with three of them arriving between 1966 and 1974.

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A combination of unreliability, false dawns, poor management and driver disputes meant that Ferrari had squandered its pace, but once the Lauda/ Forghieri/di Montezemolo era got into its stride the trend was reversed. By now there was also no longer the 'distraction' of a parallel sportscar/Le Mans programme.

Lauda had no trouble converting Ferrari's 0.546% pace advantage into the 1975 title and his guile, plus the 312T2's reliability, meant there was another championship double in 1977, despite Ferrari only being fourth fastest, 0.573% off pacesetting Lotus. Even following Lauda's horrific German GP crash, Ferrari still took the 1976 constructors' crown. It could be argued that this was the first time since the 1950s, perhaps ever, that Ferrari was making the most of its resources and potential.

Lotus then perfected the art of ground-effects in 1978, so Ferrari was again overtaken by innovation. The loss of Lauda to Brabham also hurt the team, but the use of Michelin tyres and the decent 312T3 helped Ferrari's Carlos Reutemann and Gilles Villeneuve to five victories.

Ferrari was just 0.009% faster than the opposition in 1979, which turned into a 0.538% deficit after the Williams FW07 appeared at round five. But in one of F1's most competitive seasons, Ferrari's reliability and consistency again paid dividends: Jody Scheckter and Villeneuve finished 1-2 in the drivers' table to underline how far the team had come since the end of the previous decade.

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But the next fall was dramatic. Ferrari wasn't yet ready for the turbocharged revolution - triggered by Renault - and the dimensions of the flat-12 engine hampered the team's ability to make the most of ground-effects. The 312T5 was only the seventh fastest car of 1980, matching 1973 as the team's worst position, and Ferrari was a whopping 1.860% slower than Williams.

Ferrari won three races and the constructors' title in 1982, but it surely would have yielded more victories and the drivers' crown without Villeneuve's fatal crash at Zolder and Didier Pironi's career-ending accident at Hockenheim

Once again, Ferrari had the ability to catch up. The turbocharged but cumbersome 126CK started a revival in 1981, during which Villeneuve scored two sensational victories, and the Harvey Postlethwaite-designed 126C2 was arguably the best package the following year.

Renault and Brabham (which ran both DFV and BMW turbo engines during the season) were faster, but suffered woeful reliability. Ferrari won three races and the constructors' title during the campaign, which surely would have yielded more victories and the drivers' crown had it not been for Villeneuve's fatal crash at Zolder and Didier Pironi's career-ending accident at Hockenheim.

Ferrari set the pace in 1983 and again took the constructors' title, but the points were evenly spread between Rene Arnoux and Patrick Tambay, whereas Renault's Alain Prost and champion Nelson Piquet at Brabham were very much the kings of their own domains.

Ferrari now entered one of its fallow periods as the opposition, most notably McLaren (first with Porsche and then Honda engines) and Williams (Honda), set new standards. The numbers for this era are skewed by the difference between qualifying power and fuel-restricted race pace, helping explain Michele Alboreto's run to second in the 1985 drivers' table despite his 156/85 being fifth, 1.429% off the average pace. But, fundamentally, Ferrari was not at the forefront.

As others stumbled, for example Williams losing Honda engines for 1988, Ferrari climbed back up the order to second, but it was still 1.511% and 1.445% off McLaren in 1988 and 1989 respectively. The occasional victory, rather than a championship challenge, was the order of the day.

There was a mini-revival in 1990 thanks to the 641 and Prost's arrival. The car built on John Barnard's work on semi-automatic gearboxes in the 640 and, for once, Ferrari had arguably the best chassis in F1. The V12 wasn't a match for McLaren's Honda V10, contributing to the 0.654% raw pace deficit (still Ferrari's best effort since 1983), but the package was often good enough for Prost and team-mate Nigel Mansell to charge through in the races - Prost's superb Mexican GP win a case in point.

There were six victories in all and Prost's title hopes were only ended by Ayrton Senna's infamous first-corner move at the Japanese GP, the penultimate round.

But, even following Enzo's death in 1988, internal politics remained a problem. Prost was sacked before the end of 1991. The 1992 F92A was further off the pace than any F1 Ferrari yet produced, though a good portion of its 3.4% deficit was down to the technological leap (chiefly active suspension and traction control) made by the Williams FW14B - rather than the efforts of Jean Alesi or Ivan Capelli, whose career subsequently hit the skids. But even with that taken out of the equation, Ferrari would still have been 1.908% off, in third.

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The 1993 performance wasn't much better, but the seeds were being sown for another recovery. Former team manager di Montezemolo, who had held a number of important jobs elsewhere during the 1980s, had become Ferrari president at the end of 1991 and in 1993 he appointed former Peugeot motorsport boss Jean Todt to head the F1 outfit.

When Gerhard Berger won the 1994 German GP it was Ferrari's first win for nearly four years, its longest lean spell. The 412T was still 0.802% off the pace and the 1995 412T2, which also won once, was a similar margin from the pinnacle in the hands of Berger and Montreal winner Jean Alesi, but then the pieces really started to fall into place.

The arrival of Michael Schumacher helped haul the F310, 0.548% off the pace and not always reliable, to three wins in 1996. Ross Brawn and Rory Byrne arrived for the next campaign and, despite falling slightly to 0.634% behind the last Adrian Newey-designed Williams, the FW19, improved reliability helped Schumacher battle Jacques Villeneuve for the drivers' crown, even if that infamously proved futile at the Jerez finale.

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The Todt/Schumacher/Brawn/Byrne era was marked by reduced internal politics, more focus and strategic savvy. Ferrari now had the ingredients to make the most of what it had, but it still hadn't produced F1's fastest car across a season since 1983.

The F1-2000 was a mere 0.008% ahead of McLaren - the closest the top two F1 teams have ever been on raw pace - but delivered both titles

Ferrari jumped Williams in 1998, but both were leapfrogged by Newey's remarkable McLaren MP4-13, which had an average advantage of 0.724%. Schumacher's relentlessness and Brawn's strategy calls helped produce six victories and the following year's F399 was down to 0.559% shy of the pace.

Given McLaren's missteps that season, that might have been enough for Ferrari to take the top spot had Schumacher not broken his leg at Silverstone and missed most of the rest of the campaign. Eddie Irvine stepped up and remained in title contention to the Suzuka finale as Ferrari took its first constructors' title for 16 years, but McLaren's Mika Hakkinen completed his drivers' double.

With Schumacher back to full strength, Ferrari finally reached its goal in 2000. The F1-2000 was a mere 0.008% ahead of McLaren - the closest the top two F1 teams have ever been on raw pace - but delivered both titles. Innovation was now more restricted in F1 so the chances of Ferrari being jumped by a Chapman-style game-changer was reduced, and it had all it needed to make the most of its strengths of evolution and marginal gains.

On sheer speed, Ferrari built the fastest car for five of the next six years, and delivered four more title doubles.

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The F2002 and F2004 were 'only' 0.283% and 0.219% ahead respectively, but those numbers hide bigger advantages. Ferrari's Bridgestone tyres tended not to be so strong over one lap as the Michelins on the other frontrunners, usually McLaren and Williams, but became increasingly tailored to the Italian team's needs. And they were usually brilliant over longer stints, helping Ferrari to 15 wins from 17 in 2002 and 15 wins from 18 in 2004.

The 2005 slump was largely due to the one-year switch to the no-tyre-changes rule and Ferrari was only a few points shy of another title double in 2006. Given the Ferrari's speed, it could be argued that Fernando Alonso and Renault provided the highest calibre opposition since Hakkinen and McLaren had done at the turn of the century.

Schumacher, Brawn and Byrne were gone by the time the 2007 season started, but initially Ferrari kept its momentum. The F2007 - the work of Aldo Costa, Nikolas Tombazis and John Iley - was 0.205% slower than the McLaren MP4-22, though in reality the advantage tended to swing back and forth depending on the circuit and conditions.

This time it was Ferrari's opposition that fell prey to politics, McLaren bearing the brunt of the spy scandal and internal tension thanks to newcomer Lewis Hamilton's pace alongside double champion Alonso. McLaren was ultimately excluded from the constructors' title, while Kimi Raikkonen managed to steal the drivers' crown from under the noses of Hamilton and Alonso at the Interlagos finale.

The F2008 continued the good work, despite Todt moving on and Stefano Domenicali becoming team principal. It was the quickest car by 0.059% across the season and Ferrari won the constructors' crown for the 16th time, though Hamilton beat Felipe Massa to the drivers' title in a dramatic Brazilian GP - Massa undone by a late engine failure while leading in Hungary.

The radical rule changes for 2009, chiefly concerning aerodynamics and the return of slick tyres, caught Ferrari out as it missed the double diffuser trick utilised so well by the Brawn team. The F60 was actually only 0.398% off the pace but, in F1's closest season in terms of the average pace gap from the front to the back of the field, that was only good enough for fifth fastest.

Raikkonen won at Spa, but the struggles of Luca Badoer and Giancarlo Fisichella, both of whom stepped in after Massa's Hungarian GP accident, showed how tricky the car was. Ferrari finished fourth in the constructors' championship, its worst result since 1993.

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Alonso joined in 2010 and got famously close to the drivers' title in both 2010 and 2012, but a look at the numbers demonstrate that this was more about the then best racing driver in the world performing miracles than it was Ferrari getting on top of its game.

Between 2010 and 2013, Ferrari was 0.432% (second), 0.816% (third), 0.530% (fourth) and 0.477% (third) off F1's fastest team. The strategic blunder that cost Alonso so dearly in the Abu Dhabi 2010 finale, covering Mark Webber and allowing Sebastian Vettel to nab the crown, perhaps also showed that the calls from the pitwall weren't quite as reliable as they had been under Brawn's tenure.

And Ferrari was again on the backfoot when the turbo hybrid powerplant regulations arrived in 2014, a stark contrast to its readiness for the engine rule changes of the 1960s.

Alonso and returnee Raikkonen could do little with the F14 T, which was 1.115% behind the dominant Mercedes and only fourth fastest, prompting a disgruntled Alonso's departure at season's end. The SF15-T was better, 0.703% away in second, and new recruit Vettel scored three fine victories in 2015, but a championship challenge still seemed a long way away and there was a step back in the winless 2016 campaign.

The arrival of wider, faster cars helped Ferrari finally get back into the ballpark in 2017. The SF70H was only 0.179% slower than the Mercedes W08. Raikkonen's struggles meant that the constructors' championship was always going to be a long shot, but Vettel would have been a lot closer to Hamilton had it not been for some reliability problems and driver errors.

Ferrari's 2020 struggles - 1.661% off the pace after the Italian GP - show it is not just the excellence of Mercedes that the team has to overcome

The SF71H was even closer (0.119%) and 2018 is probably the year Ferrari should have ended its long wait for a title. The Ferrari was often faster than the Mercedes W09 in the first part of the season and Raikkonen was more competitive - indeed, Mercedes number two Valtteri Bottas was the driver in a top car that struggled, as Raikkonen ended a lengthy personal win drought at the US GP.

But Hamilton was too good for Vettel, who threw away a golden chance to extend his championship advantage in the German GP by going off while leading. Then Hamilton made the most of rain during Hungarian GP qualifying to set up a victory that might otherwise have fallen to Ferrari.

The Italian GP perhaps summed up the season. The Ferraris qualified 1-2, but the team decided to tell Raikkonen his services would not be required for 2019. The polesitter proved more combative than usual against Vettel on the first lap, and Hamilton took the opportunity to attack. While Vettel ended up facing backwards, Hamilton harassed Raikkonen before taking one of his best victories and extending his unlikely championship lead to 30.

Last year's Ferrari was only 0.149% behind Mercedes on raw pace, but neither it, nor drivers Charles Leclerc or Vettel were consistent enough to topple Hamilton.

Given the high level that Hamilton and Mercedes have been operating at in recent years, it is probably not fair to say Ferrari's recent failures have been as disastrous as some of its previous lean periods, such as the 1980s.

But for Ferrari to win a championship in current F1, that's what it has to beat. And Ferrari's 2020 struggles - 1.661% off the pace after the Italian GP - show it is not just the excellence of Mercedes that the team has to overcome.

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The good news for Ferrari fans is that the Scuderia rarely stays that far off the front for very long. And even when it isn't winning titles, Ferrari has usually been near the sharp end. In the 69 seasons (excluding 2020) since it started winning in 1951, Ferrari has only failed to win at least one world championship race on 13 occasions: 1957, 1962, 1965, 1967, 1969, 1973, 1980, 1986, 1991-93, 2014 and 2016.

The bad news is that it has rarely made the most of what it has, in terms of producing the fastest car or of making the most of competitive machinery when its designers have delivered. It could be argued that Ferrari has only really consistently fulfilled its potential on two occasions, the second half of the 1970s and the first half of the 2000s.

Both eras featured di Montezemolo in a key role, a Germanic lead driver and a neutralisation of the politics that have often contributed to the team buckling under the pressure of expectation. A pressure that has come, and will continue to come, from itself, Italy and the successes of its illustrious past.