(upbeat music)
- Ferrari sucks this year.
So what happened?
- [Announcer] Out of the race, Sebastian Vettel.
As Charles LeClerc does now become
the first retirement from this race.
- And all the question marks will point back
to the technical directives.
- This is Sebastian Vettel
and this is Ferrari's SF718 Formula 1 car.
At this moment, it's halfway through the season.
Sebastian is first in the driver's championship,
and Ferrari is first in the constructors championship.
Within the next three seconds though, all of that changes.
- [Announcer] A massive disappointment
for the championship leader.
- This would be the last time Ferrari was on top.
Exactly two years from that day,
Ferrari went from first in the standings to fifth.
If you don't watch F1, that really sucks.
There's only 10 teams, and the rankings change
more gradually than other sports.
But we can't pin Ferrari's fall from grace
on a single crash or even a single race.
What's happening inside Ferrari?
Why has the season been an absolute dumpster fire?
With lots of help from my F1-obsessed friends.
- It's crazy how things went so wrong so quickly.
- It's, it's not good.
It's not a good situation.
- It is nothing short of depressing.
- We're gonna find out.
- Thanks to WheelHouse for sponsoring this episode of Keeps.
- [Man] Do thanks to Keeps-
(all laughing)
- Sorry, take two.
Thanks to Keeps for sponsoring this episode of WheelHouse.
(upbeat music)
- Hey Uncle Jerry.
- Nolan.
- Oh, my God, what happened to your head?
- What, this old thing?
I didn't listen to my own advice and use Keeps.
So now I sit here in my rocking chair all day,
and nostalge about the good old days
when I had thick full luscious hair
as thick as those legs, give me those legs.
(Nolan screaming)
- You know, losing my hair is a real fear
because I know that two out of three men
will experience some sort of male pattern baldness
by the time they're 35.
I know a lot of you watching this don't want to make
that awkward trek through the pharmacy
or to the doctor's office to get hair loss medication.
But lucky for you, Keeps makes it easy.
They let you see a doctor online,
and they send you hair loss medication
directly to your door, every three months.
Time is ticking, though, because hair loss treatments
take about four to six months
before you start seeing results.
So what are you waiting for?
Click the link in the description below
or go to keeps.com/wheelhouse50
that's K-E-E-P-S.com/wheelhouse50
for 50% off your first order.
- Come on, Nolan, come with me.
I got to stories to tell.
- To understand why Ferrari are failing now,
we have to go back to a time
when a major sea change happened in F1.
In 2014 the sanctioning body of Formula 1, the FIA,
mandated that every team use a turbocharged V6 engine
from that season onward.
And no one adopted better to this new regulation
than Mercedes AMG Petronas.
Since then, the German outfit has won
every constructor's championship,
the season long battle between each team.
And their lead driver Lewis Hamilton
has won nearly every driver's championship,
the season long battle between each driver.
The only two teams that have threatened Merc's dominance
in the current V6 era are Red Bull and Ferrari.
So we charted all three of those teams points
over the last three seasons.
This is Germany, where that crash happened.
And this is where Ferrari stands today.
Mercedes has amplified their dominance,
and Red Bull has now surpassed the Italian stallions.
During any decline, blame can be directed
towards some combination of the drivers,
the team management, and of course the car.
So let's go through those one by one
and figure out which is the biggest culprit.
(cool jazz music)
Now a lot of blame for Ferrari's decline
has been directed towards Sebastian Vettel,
usually in one of two ways.
If you're not a Seb fan, it's because he's lost his touch,
he sucks and should retire.
If you are a Seb fan, of course he's having a bad 2020.
Ferrari announced he wouldn't be driving for the team
next year before the season even began.
Do I think that a four time world champ sucks
or would possibly sabotage an entire season out of revenge?
No, come on.
But I will concede that Seb's confidence
was very likely smashed to pieces after Germany 2018.
The yips are real.
- You got to remember that 2018,
Vettel could have won that, could have won the title.
And it was that mistake in Germany at Hockenheim.
- This is Tom McKluskey, AKA TomoF1.
He has a great F1 YouTube channel.
- That seemed to be like the epicenter
of where things started to go wrong.
And then once that happened,
just these mistakes just started creeping in
more and more often.
He seemed to lose confidence in the car.
- [Nolan] But let's imagine for a minute
that Sebastian was doing just as well as his teammate,
Charles LeClerc, this season.
Charles has 49 points, so that's 49 each,
which makes 98 points.
That puts them fourth.
Just six points ahead of Racing Point
and 227 behind Mercedes.
- Charles, we know, is different gravy.
We know he's quality and he's struggling as well.
And there's no smoke without fire.
There's definitely a significant issue
at the heart of that Ferrari team.
- Starting to think that drivers aren't the problem here.
So that leads us up the chain.
(energetic cool music)
Before the 2019 season Ferrari promoted
then chief technical director Mattia Binotto
to team principal.
And according to some Ferrari fans,
Mattia is the one to blame for the shortcomings of 2019.
And the absolute failure of 2020.
The team principal is like
the person running the entire show.
- So he was, he was Rubens Barrichello's race engineer
for a while back in the day.
He was part of the team
throughout the Schumacher dominance.
He's been a fundamental part of that Ferrari team
for a very long time on the technical side.
- To me, it seems like having a background in racing,
especially on the team you've been a part of for so long,
like Binotto, would be a natural advantage
to knowing how to lead said team.
But that's not necessarily the case.
- Being good at the technical side of things
does not guarantee success as a team principal.
There's various examples around the grid
of leaders who aren't necessarily technical people
but just know how to move
and how to prioritize and how to create
and build a team that is gonna be successful.
And I feel like Mattia should be focused
on the technical side of things.
And they need to get a leader in elsewhere
who's actually gonna delegate properly, if you ask me.
- Ultimately, if a team is failing
that means the team principal is failing.
They choose the drivers.
They choose the direction to take the engineering.
Everything is basically under their control.
However, one of the few things they can't control
are FIA regulations.
A quick change in the rules can swiftly
wipe out a technological advantage
that was keeping one team ahead of the other.
And that seems to be the exact case with Ferrari.
(energetic upbeat music)
During the 2018 and '19 seasons
Ferrari had one of the strongest engines on the grid.
The car was extremely fast on the straights
and that helped the drivers grab all those podiums.
But in preseason testing of this year,
Ferrari was seriously off pace, just like bad.
So what happened between their decent
2019 season and testing?
Back in 2018, right around the time Ferrari
were putting up a fight against Mercedes,
The FIA began monitoring Ferrari's cars a little bit closer.
The Ferrari straight line speed couldn't be matched.
- The Ferrari straight line speed,
really like they've always had that advantage.
- That's my buddy and fellow YouTuber CrankyYankeeF1.
- But it got significant at Monza and Spa.
- And everyone was getting a little suspicious.
How were they so fast in the straights?
Teams are given a maximum fuel flow rate
that they have to abide by.
And that's what the FIA was looking at.
But what if Ferrari could fool the FIA
by fooling their sensors?
- There are fuel fuel flow restrictions
and the higher fuel flow, it just loosely,
better performance.
Give me some rope.
If as long as they're good in the detection time zones.
'Cause they like if they can figure out when that is
all the other times they can slowly drip extra fuel flow.
- If you could figure out the interval
at which the anti-cheat sensors sensed the fuel,
then exceed the fuel flow rate
when the sensor wasn't looking,
they can make a little bit more power, baby.
So Red Bull suspected Ferrari was using this method
to cheat the sensors, but didn't have proof.
So instead of outright accusing Ferrari,
Red Bull filed an inquiry with the FIA.
- What Red Bull did was really smart is they said,
tell us if this is legal.
So now anyone doing it, they've set a new precedent to say
that's legal or illegal.
- It's basically like saying,
"Hey, we figured out this really cool way
"of cheating your sensors in this way.
"Is this cheating?"
According to racefans.net Ferrari denied allegations
last year that they modified their power unit
in response to the FIA's new guidelines on fuel flow rate,
but not everyone agrees.
- The technical directive came.
And then a couple races later their pace
was dropping precipitously.
- There's no way that it's a coincidence
that this ruling's come in,
and then Ferrari have gone from arguably the fastest car,
definitely in terms of a straight line,
to now the eighth fastest car.
- But the biggest development in the story so far
was the FIA's announcement at the beginning
of the 2020 season that said quote,
"After a thorough technical investigations,
"it has concluded its analysis of the operation
"of the Scuderia Ferrari Formula 1 power unit
"and reached a settlement with the team.
"The specifics of the agreement
"will remain between the parties."
In simpler terms, yeah, Ferrari was doing something.
No, we're not gonna tell you what.
- It's dodgy.
Don't get me wrong, you know, all the Formula 1 teams
were questioning why it was a sealed envelope,
why whatever agreement, you know,
the FIA and Ferrari came to was not disclosed to the public.
- This is Matt Gallagher.
He's an OG in the F1 social media YouTube game.
- Clearly it was something that would be deemed
that Ferrari weren't playing by the rules last year.
- The lack of transparency has wound up a lot of people.
And Ferrari are claiming,
Oh, it's to protect their intellectual property.
Well, I'm sorry Mattia, but clearly that IP
isn't really worth much, mate.
- Not only that guys, Ferrari also agreed to help the FIA,
quote "In other regulatory duties in formula 1
"and in its research activities
"on carbon emissions and sustainable fuels."
Translation, we'll help you find out if other teams
are doing the same thing.
- Yeah, that's how they'll spin it, is that they helped
even though - Yeah.
- They definitely cheated last year.
- If we look back at our graph,
here is where Red Bull presented their inquiry to the FIA.
Here's where the FIA sent out the technical directives
related to fuel consumption.
And then this past off season
is where the final regulations were put in place.
There definitely seems to be some sort of relationship.
Now the theory goes with the straight line speed gone
and a chassis that doesn't have the aero
to be fast in the corners,
Ferrari's left with a total dud of a car.
- Whatever they were doing in 2019, cheat or not,
whatever, they don't have the power advantage.
They don't have the straight line speed.
And in all honesty, they don't have the slow turn advantage.
They don't have the medium speed turn advantage.
They don't have the down force advantage.
They don't have anything.
- When I look at the management, the drivers,
and the car's performance over the past few years,
these new regulations,
which seem to be aimed directly at Ferrari,
really appear to have had the biggest impact on the team.
So the question remains,
what can Ferrari fans expect in the future?
Well, in the short term, no huge improvements.
Because of COVID, the teams are limited
in the changes they can make to the car
between this season and 2021.
They also have to contend with a new,
$145 million budget cap coming into play.
And because of that, it's likely Ferrari
won't be putting a ton of money
into developing next year's car.
- They're probably just going,
"2021, let's just throw that away.
"Let's go to 2022."
So, but after that,
that's when they have to get their act together.
If they don't in 2022,
I don't know, it's gonna be pretty,
be pretty bad for them, I think.
- Now, I want to leave Ferrari fans with a glimmer of hope.
Believe it or not,
this isn't even Ferrari's worst year so far.
In 1980 Ferrari finished 10th,
scoring just eight points overall.
They've been in this position before.
- When Schumacher joined Ferrari,
they weren't a world championship winning team then,
far from it.
So when he went, you know,
he built the team from the ground up
and then they went to winning ways.
You know, just because they're going through
this tough time, doesn't mean
that that's going to be like that forever.
- I look at what, how they've recovered
from so many situations that I...
There's a reason why the only team
that's been here since the start.
- They'll figure it out.
They just need to figure it out.
So what do you think the problem is?
Seb, Mattia, the new regulations?
Let me know in the comments.
I want to give a huge thank you
to all the creators who helped me with this video,
Tom McKluskey, AKA TomoF1.
Please check out his channel.
He's got a really cool style over there.
And check out his podcast, the Cool-Down podcast.
I was on it.
Check out CrankyYankeeF1.
He just put out a monster video on Ferrari's worst seasons.
A lot more numbers in that one in this video.
Go follow Matt Gallagher on Twitter.
He's always posting those dank memes.
And check out all the WTF1 content.
Those guys are awesome.
And I hope to meet all these people in person very soon.
Maybe we can join forces at a race or something.
And if anyone at Ferrari is watching this.
just stick with it.
Be kind, I'll see you next time.