If there is a quality that Ferrari has been able to refine over the last few years, it is to transform any glimmer of hope into an announced disaster. The 2025, which was supposed to be the year of rebirth – with the arrival of Lewis Hamilton, promised updates at each curve and a Leclerc renewed until 2026 – is proving to be one of the most bleak chapters in the recent history of the team. In the obstinate and contrary direction compared to what all the other stables have set over the past few years, and therefore young and hungry pilots and not old glories that perhaps will be useful to sell in the trucks but bring nothing in terms of results and progress on the track, Ferrari is even coming to the improvement of the disasters: because every corrective move is if possible far worse than what should be corrected.

The presentation of January, in a not indifferent marketing effort, had once again deluded us that the gap with McLaren and Red Bull could not be filled at least to be considerably reduced. And instead …

Greetings from Zandvoort

And instead from Zandvoort there is a postcard that really looks like something tremendously definitive. The meme of the Mercedes fans is ruthless: Hamilton who plants an umbrella on the sand of the bordist and instead of the towel stretches the muse of the Red.

Lewis Hamilton – the expert pilot who should have brought experience and charisma – ended miserably against the barriers to curve 3. Thanks to a wet track and a car that seems to draw traps more than trajectories. A mistake that, for heaven’s sake, is human when driving, or rather, trying to interpret a beast that on more than one occasion this year Leclerc himself defined ungovernable on the wet. The image of Hamilton that collects the shards of the Museto of the SG-25, with a disconsolate and understandable conditioned reflection, is the worst one can illustrate. In that image there is all Ferrari disaster. But also the absolute inability of Hamilton to raise the fate of a car whose image in the archives of this season is that of a fireball beached on the track.

But when Leclerc also ends up in the gravel after avoidable contact with Antonelli, you understand that the problem is not episodic. It is systemic. And you can’t constantly go in search of a culprit that is not someone else. When the pilots themselves do not translate their actions into joy of driving a fireball but in the terror of doing the wrong thing at the moment I am wrong. Which in the Netherlands has punctually happened.

A fragile and nervous machine

This year’s disaster starts from a car born badly and grown worse. According to what analyzed by engineers and experts who are trying to give an identity even more than a solution to this red sink, the Ferrari 2025 suffers from a structural problem at the car bottom, which forces the team to keep a height from the ground than the rivals to avoid damaging the plank. This translates into a chronic loss of aerodynamic load in fast curves, where Red Bull, McLaren and Mercedes, time trial in hand, do the void.

The paradox? The promised updates – such as the revisited rear suspension – have arrived with the dropper and seem to spread the problem rather than correct it. Fred Vasseur, Team Principal increasingly alone and with the gaze lost in the void, for months considered yet another scapegoat, climbs the mirrors: “The problem is not the machine, it is the execution of the weekend”. It looks like a gigantic supercazzola. But it doesn’t make you laugh.

The pilots: frustration and sarcasm

Leclerc, a long heartfelt, has alternated with eloquent silences, those of those of those who have nothing to say. After contact with Kimi Antonelli in Holland, Leclerc made self -criticism. But he also let an eloquent message thrown there … “There is something does not return to the way we prepare the races”. His smile, already rare, has now completely disappeared. Hamilton, for his part, candidly admitted that “does not have fun” and that “many things must change”. Before the summer break he had even come to put his contract back into the hands of Vasseur: of the series “maybe the problem is me …”. Not exactly the tone of a seven times champion just arrived in a historic stable to relaunch it.

And since luck is blind, but in the case of Ferrari the bad luck sees us perfectly, here in Montreal, even a meeting a marmot – a nice animal that traditionally sight has little – contributed to ruining the race: he hit the animal at the beginning of the race, damaging the bottom and losing 20 points of aerodynamic load. When the local fauna also puts against you, perhaps it is appropriate to reflect.

Errors add up, the competition thanks

Also because Ferrari does not only lose points. He is losing in authority and credibility: and this for such a brand is unforgivable. The thought is to the engineer, to what he will be seeing and suffering … “Because not forgetting that everyone wants a Ferrari, but the surname Ferrari is mine …”, he said to the technicians when the car seemed not to perform at the height of what was his expectations. All this while McLaren regularly places both cars on the podium, Mercedes is reborn with well -targeted updates thanks to the unconscious enthusiasm of a pilot that makes high schools, and Red Bull remains extremely competitive while reducing the budget and trying – also for the same interest – to keep the competition life. Without massacring it as it happened until three years ago.

What is Ferrari today …

Each weekend is a déjà-vu: disastrous free practice, qualifications thrown away for questionable strategies or riders errors, competitions compromised by tactical choices to the limit of self-harm. But the deepest problem is probably also of identity. What is Ferrari today? A stable that points to the title? A team that should grow young people? A marketing showcase for the brand? Nobody seems to know clearly. The objectives change to each interview, and also the communication of the team is schizophrenic: one passes from the proclamations of absolute trust to the wrals veiled to future changes of course.

The dominant feeling is that you browse you on sight. And not only the pilots, but the fans. The real ones. Those who will also take a place this week in the hope that … “At least this is the right time”. They are the same that today ask themselves if Hamilton made the right choice, or if it was not better to retire from king on board the Mercedes.

In the queue: the industrial question

On the industrial front, Ferrari Spa continues to grind profits and sales records. The rampant horse on the series cars is in splendid shape. But what happens on the track, for some time, seems to almost embarrass those who work in Maranello on Supercars. Because if the brand runs, the team arranges. And the idea that the two realities can live on separate tracks is becoming more and more concrete. And very dangerous: Ferrari has always considered the success of his cars directly proportional to those of Formula 1. Meanwhile, Red Bull is already preparing for 2026 allowing himself the luxury to evaluate whether Verstappen is a luxury or a necessity, Mercedes renews Russell, and Ferrari remains there, stopped, with two confused and unwanted drivers, a unfriendly machine, and a technical direction that seems more good to defend the indefensible credible.

And then, while Monza approaches – which should be the party – the risk is that the Italian Grand Prix this year becomes a sports funeral. Because Ferrari 2025, at the moment, is the perfect emblem of Italy who believes he is great, but who has forgotten how he is winning.