New year and the same old Ferrari, or some would say the Italian team was worse off in 2023. Despite the solitary win in 2023 from Carlos Sainz, the overall performance of the Scuderia was subpar at best. Yes, they were better than most teams on the Saturdays but as usual, the outcome on Sunday was the same. Everyone recognizes the team needs a better and more reliable car while unlocking the mystery of tire degradation. However, the problem is much more deep-rooted which he often witnessed during races for Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz, but it often flies under the radar.

Let us bring this underlying problem to your attention. The problem we are talking about here is the incompetence of Ferrari’s backroom staff. A driver might take the accolades for the race win but it is their crew in the garage and on the pit wall that enables them to win the races. So far, in Ferrari, it’s quite the opposite! We often talk about the failed strategies and the absurd calls during the race which hampers the races of the men in red. Today, let’s look at exactly how important the trackside engineers really are.

A look at celebrated driver-engineer relationships in the world of F1

In the past couple of years, we have seen Max Verstappen form a formidable relationship with his trackside engineer Gianpiero Lambiase. He isn’t alone, past world champions like Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel had similar relationships with their engineers. This is a crucial and often overlooked aspect of Formula 1 racing as the trust in the calls and decisions between the two parties often dictates the outcome of a race for the driver.

This is exactly what was discussed in the latest episode of the BBC’s F1: Chequered Flag podcast. The guest host Harry Benjamin says, “I got to pay a lot of attention to his engineer, Gianpiero Lambiase, and in the way they work together as well. GP was his engineer at Red Bull from day 1. When Verstappen took his first F1 win, that was GP’s first F1 win too.”

He added, “We used to talk about Sebastian Vettel and his engineer Rocque (Guillaume Rocquelin) and they had such a good connection. I think we need to talk more about Verstappen and GP having that good connection as well.”

Jennie Gow added, “You’ve heard it plenty of times with Lewis Hamilton and Peter Bonnington, who is his race engineer. That reliance to have faith in your race engineer but also to take the calls you don’t support fully when you’re a driver, it’s a very symbiotic relationship.”

Read More: “Not Mature Enough”: Charles Leclerc Given a Bitter Dose of Criticism by F1 Veteran Despite Ferrari’s Underperformance

These underrated relationships make a huge difference in the world of F1 and this between the driver and their engineer trust is monumental. These calls from the engineer can make or break a race for the driver. To think we don’t hear such compliments for either Leclerc or Sainz’s engineers speaks volumes. They are after all expected to win races and the championship. Instead, let us highlight what is being said about the Ferrari engineers.

F1 journo tears into Charles Leclerc’s race engineer for annoying practice

We all remember the embarrassing 2022 Monaco GP where the team ruined Lecelrc’s race. However, indecisive and underconfident strategic calls are a common occurrence in the Ferrari pit wall. In fact, we have seen instances where the engineers have left the important strategic calls on a variable like a safety car in the race, something we say in Abu Dhabi.

The hilariously plan C, D, E, and F are also part of Ferrari’s vocabulary. These instances make you lose faith in the Ferrari’s strategic calls which have been questionable in the past few years, to say the least. We have also witnessed instances where the Ferrari race engineers are asking the drivers for their input on the strategic calls. You either make a driver comply with the calls or give them the task while they’re hurtling down a track at 250 mph.

Former Ferrari manager & F1 journo Peter Windsor criticized this exact practice with Lecelrc’s race engineer Xavier Marcos Padros in question. “You don’t want to be asking a driver to help you make a decision in the middle of a race,” Windsor remarked.

Windsor shared his opinion by putting himself in Leclerc’s cockpit and rightly so confessed he would be extremely annoyed if he heard such radio messages. “I’ve got to say, that engineer they do have talking to Charles [Leclerc], I mean, if I was Charles, I’d get a bit annoyed by that. He says to Charles things like, you can tell he’s thinking in his head, I want to make sure Charles is happy with what we’re going to do, which again, is going too far the other way. You don’t want to be asking a driver to help you make a decision in the middle of a race, all he wants is to know the decision’s been made for this reason and get on with it, basically,” he added.

Ferrari already garners a lot of negative attention for wasting Leclerc’s raw talent because of their unreliability. Despite that, the poor strategic calls also make their way to the front pages ever so often.

WATCH THIS STORY | Ferrari Strategy Fails We Will Never Forget

To come back to winning ways and fight Red Bull, the Italian team needs each and every department in top shape. For now, that is far from the case and Frederic Vasseur will play a crucial role in the coming years to change this scenario, if he even recognizes the need for it.