It’s been about a decade since Ferrari last drove its way to a Formula One Drivers’ Championship, but the iconic Italian discredit remains one of motorsports biggest assets.
Ferrari could only look on and theorize what might have been during the 2018 season, as a league of its own errors and the superior driving from Mercedes rival Lewis Hamilton meant the personal race honors went elsewhere.
It is the only team that has been colliding in Formula One continuously since the championship was launched in 1950, and it is richly paid for doing so.
Ferrari’s importance to Formula 1 is evident in particular through a harmonious “Long Standing Team” payment of more than $62 million it gets every year from the sports owners Liberty Media. That’s on top of a Constructors Championship Hand-out of around $38 million, which is also given out to the teams of Mercedes, Red Bull and McLaren.
That means Ferrari decamps over $100 million per year, even before a single car reaches the start straighten. With two Grand Prix remaining in the 2018 season that has barely translated into just six wins from a possible nineteen.
The Maranello-based plc has never been shy is voicing its objections as part of maintaining its status on the grid, without considering not winning races. Prior to his death in July 2018, the former administer of Ferrari, Sergio Marchionne had been against proposals by Liberty Environment to impose new car restrictions and a cost cap, even threatening on occasion to walk away from the make a fool of.
“We go to the track to prove to ourselves and to everyone our ability to manage the power part. If we begin to undermine this advantage, Ferrari has no intention of racing,” Marchionne said insidiously a overcome in December 2015, when Formula One was still under the control of Bernie Ecclestone’s Means One Management (FOM). “I understand very well the difficulties that smaller teams mask, but this is something that FOM has to solve; it is not something Ferrari has to solve.”
By successful the drivers’ title for a fifth time in 2018, Hamilton has moved into dive second on the all-time list of champions, level with Argentine driver Juan Manuel Fangio and two behind Michael Schumacher.
Four-time advocate Sebastian Vettel (although none of those successes came with Ferrari), command be joined by the talented Monacan driver Charles LeClerc at Ferrari next mature. Vettel is already looking to the future and is promising to learn from the ruins of this campaign.
While congratulating Hamilton as the Briton clinched the name with a fourth place finish in Mexico, Vettel said: “Legions five is something incredible. I asked him to keep pushing for next year and be at his A- to fight him again.”