It seems a little strange, but Ferrari fans will be cheering on Sebastian Vettel who will wear the red uniform for the first time in his Formula One career. He will be racing alongside Kimi Räikkönen, who will be starting his thirteenth Formula One season. In 2014, Ferrari had a fair season, but it wasn’t the typical performance that we are used to seeing from the Ferrari team. Nevertheless, Ferrari is still a very popular team, especially in the Italian community. However, with the loss of Fernando Alonso as a driver, Ferrari shouldn’t expect to see the same level of enthusiasm from the Spanish fans, compared to as they have had in the past. Since they are gaining a German driver, but there are multiple other German drivers, there will not be nearly as many German fans to replace the Spanish.
Although fans do have an impact of the team’s performance, the bigger factor is the drivers. Sebastian Vettel is a four-time World Drivers’ Championship and proved to be very successful when he joined Red Bull Racing in 2009. However, Vettel is a very over-rated driver. When he joined Red Bull in 2009, the team had just developed a great car. In the years prior to that, they had little success racing a car that wasn’t able to compete with the top teams. And then we saw in 2014, that unless Vettel is handed a good car, he can’t win races. And the 2014 car wasn’t even that bad because Daniel Ricciardo was able to get wins and podiums many times that season. At the state that the Ferrari car is in right now, he just won’t have the perfect car that he needs in order to accomplish anything on the team.
As for Kimi Räikkönen, his Formula One career is just about over. He has already reached the peak of his career prior to his absence from the sport in 2010 and 2011. He has now entered the decline portion of his career, having had the worst season of his career in 2014. In fact, in 2014 he had an average finishing position (excluding retirements) of ninth. This isn’t really something that can be fixed, as it happens to all drivers as they reach the point at which they should retire. It happened to Michael Schumacher when he returned to race for Mercedes. At this point, Räikkönen is still able to win points for the team and therefore still a small help, but it is difficult to say for how much longer this will be true.
Overall, the Ferrari team has a sub-par lineup for 2015. They’ve lost two of their long term drivers in the course of two seasons. It started with Felipe Massa leaving the team and now Fernando Alonso. With the lineup that they have for this season, Ferrari had better work hard to make a really competitive car or else we won’t see a lot of success from them in 2015.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer or company. Assumptions made in any analysis contained within this article are not reflective of the position of any entity other than the author.
