The 2024 season is set to be a strange year at Ferrari.
The talk should be about how Ferrari is looking to reclaim their spot as the second-best team in F1. After starting out the new era of regulations in 2022 on fire, the team has fallen back to Earth.
In 2022, Red Bull pulled away from them by the end of the year. In 2023, they were all over the place, and ended up finishing third in the team standings to Red Bull and Mercedes.
Ferrari did still manage to be the only team not named Red Bull to win a race in 2023. Still, mistakes down the stretch by both drivers and team cost them a chance to surpass Mercedes for P2.
Nobody knew what to expect from Ferrari in 2024. But after last week’s breaking news, things got a lot more interesting.
When it was reported that Lewis Hamilton would be joining Ferrari in 2025, it made Carlos Sainz the odd man out. When Sainz joined Ferrari in 2021, there was much optimism about the potential of that combination. Sainz was coming off an impressive two year run with McLaren, where he helped bring the team back to relevance.
However, Sainz’s tenure with Ferrari has been underwhelming. Not bad, but not to the standard set by his teammate Charles Leclerc. Between a lack of pace and too many mistakes, Sainz has failed to perform at the same level he did at McLaren.
Perhaps the final blow to Sainz was at last season’s finale at Abu Dhabi. With Ferrari just two points behind Mercedes, Sainz crashed heavily in practice. Even after repairs, the car was not the same, and it carried through the rest of the weekend. Had Sainz not crashed in practice, Ferrari likely would have taken P2 from Mercedes.
With this impending driver change, 2024 becomes a bit of a bridge year for Ferrari. However, that’s not to say that the team can’t deliver great results this season.
Despite finishing behind Mercedes last year in the standings, Ferrari has had the better overall pace by the end of the year. Going back to the start of 2022, Ferrari is the only team that has ever posed a legitimate threat to Red Bull under the new regulations.
While little is currently known about development of the 2024 car, these points give room for optimism that Ferrari can still perform well this season.
The Hamilton era looms over Ferrari, but there’s still success to be had in the meantime.
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