The Verstappen broadside that underlines Ferrari's alarming recent slump

 “We need to survive this.”

Ferrari’s message to Charles Leclerc as he disastrously ran intermediate tyres in still largely dry conditions during the recent British Grand Prix. It sums up the Italian team’s mid-season perfectly.

Having begun the campaign as Red Bull’s closest challenger and with fine wins when Max Verstappen’s squad fizzled off-boil in Australia and Monaco, Ferrari is now enduring a spell as Formula 1’s fourth fastest team. McLaren has leapt so far ahead it can now trade bodywork with Verstappen mid-race, should anyone be so aggressively inclined. And leaving Silverstone, Mercedes had matched Ferrari’s win total having looked hopelessly lost in the season’s early rounds.

Ferrari only has itself to blame. Its Imola upgrade worked well enough, but the subsequent sidepod, floor, diffuser and rear wing update package brought to Barcelona was another catastrophe. There, the SF-24s were bouncing through the track’s high-speed turns – robbing Leclerc and Carlos Sainz of confidence and precious time as they fought to find a way through regardless. The sensation repeated in Austria and then again at Silverstone’s properly high-speed stuff. By then, Ferrari had realised it had to compare data directly with the Imola specification via fitting that to Sainz’s car for Friday practice. The Scuderia concluded those parts were faster and so ran with them for the British race.

Afterwards, Sainz was moved to say: “We have lost two or three months of performance gain. Clearly, we haven’t taken the right calls recently.” He described the later floor in particular as “undrivable” on high-speed tracks, putting Ferrari back to the Imola square one.

Silverstone could also be viewed as alarming on another key area of Ferrari’s story in recent years: how its strategy calls have often been shambolic, particularly in the 2022 campaign where it challenged for the title. Much work has gone into improving this under new team boss Frederic Vasseur, which has largely paid off. Team insiders place a premium on having a better, predictable car that doesn’t destroy its tyres – as the SF-24 is – as a vital factor in making in-race tactical calls easier.

Development mistakes and miscued strategy calls have stalled Ferrari's season

Photo by: Ferrari

To end up on that first, ultimately devastated set of inters at Silverstone, Leclerc was led to believe the race’s first rainstorm was going to last longer than it did. He therefore made the call to pit based on incorrect information.

But it cannot simply be said that Ferrari has cracked and reverted to its previously panicked operation. Because Sainz and his crew were able to understand that “survive” was the key in staying out longer on slicks initially and then pitting for inters when the second rainstorm struck. Sainz’s pace was so good he loomed behind Verstappen at one stage.

That Verstappen drily surmised “even Carlos rocked up at the party, so I was like, ‘geez, this is a really bad afternoon’” is quietly devastating for Ferrari. It’s just slow through this middle phase of the campaign.

Hamilton will be in Ferrari red and is already fielding questions about his choice that enrage him on bad days and leave magnanimity as his only option for replies on good ones

The good news is this is fixable. Again, how McLaren and Mercedes have progressed is key. As is the feeling that Red Bull has hit something of a development ceiling in this era with the RB20.

But 2026 is fast approaching, with all teams soon set to abandon development on their current cars and eke their life out through 2025 evolutions. Then, Hamilton will be in Ferrari red and is already fielding questions about his choice that enrage him on bad days and leave magnanimity as his only option for replies on good ones.

To avoid the beginning of the seven-time world champion’s new era being an embarrassment, Ferrari must act fast and fix its current car.

Ferrari is playing catch up to Mercedes, Red Bull and McLaren for the rest of the year

Photo by: Ferrari