Mexico Grand Prix: Ferrari going backwards in race to close gap on Mercedes

Overtaken by Red Bull Racing as the best of the rest behind Mercedes-GP, recent criticism of the team and failures on the track is shining an unwelcome spotlight on the Italian marquee.

Ferrari drivers Sebastian Vettel, left, of Germany, and Kimi Raikkonen, of Finland, walk to the driver's parade prior to the start of the Monaco Formula One Grand Prix. Petr David Josek / AP Photo

Ferrari expected much better than this in 2016. After ending last season with three wins and promises of pulling closer to Mercedes, Ferrari instead slid backward.

There have been no victories, just one podium finish in the last nine races and Ferrari are once again fending off questions about discord within Formula One’s most popular team.

Just look at last weekend’s race at the United States Grand Prix.

After a disappointing qualifying in which both drivers started on the third row, Sebastian Vettel finished fourth and Kimi Raikkonen did not finish at all. He was forced to return to the garage after leaving a pit stop with an improperly attached wheel.

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Judged by race officials as an unsafe release, Ferrari were hit with a fine.

Seeing sparks fly as he pulled away, Raikkonen put the car in reverse for a humiliating return drive back downhill as Ferrari slipped farther behind Red Bull Racing for second place in the team championship, which they have not won since 2008.

“Far from ideal” is how the deadpan Raikkonen summed it up. The same could be said about Ferrari’s entire season as Formula One heads to the Mexican Grand Prix this weekend.

Ferrari landed in Mexico last season full of optimism. Vettel had scored the non-Mercedes wins all year. He was a regular on the podium and Ferrari were cruising toward a second-place finish in the constructor’s championship.

There has been none of the same confidence this year. The Ferrari drivers – both former world champions – have made more noise with their mouths than their cars.

Vettel has complained about slow drivers, and he and Raikkonen have criticised the defensive tactics of Red Bull’s brash Dutch teenager Max Verstappen as dangerous.

Luca Baldisserri, Ferrari’s former chief engineer who left the team after last season, caused a stir around F1 before the US Grand Prix when he told Italian media that Ferrari leadership had created a “climate of fear”.

“They are no longer a team, but a group of frightened people,” Baldisserri said.

Ferrari team principal Maurizio Arrivabene dismisses external criticism. “It’s an old story. Ferrari in Italy is like the Italian football national team. I think pressure is normal, having tension is normal, having criticism is normal, so you have to live with that. Then, sometimes it’s going too far,” Arrivabene said.

“This is part of the job, like it or not. The atmosphere inside the house is completely different to what people thought about, or what you are reading sometimes in the newspaper.”

To be fair, Ferrari are far from the panic that had set in 2014 when Mercedes blew everyone away with their new V6 turbo hybrid engines. Ferrari had scrapped their way back to best-of-the-rest in 2015, making this season’s results so frustrating.

And Red Bull’s resurgence has some thinking that they are the team to knock off Mercedes in 2017. Red Bull teammates Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo have the only non-Mercedes win this year and those two are considered likely contenders for future world titles.

Ferrari have not won a driver’s championship since Raikkonen in 2007 and the last time they were seriously in the hunt was 2012 with Fernando Alonso.

The pairing of Raikkonen with Vettel, who won four titles with Red Bull, gives Ferrari a powerful punch behind the wheel if they can get competitive cars.

Vettel is under contract with Ferrari through next season and said he will not think about starting negotiations until after this season is finished.

“I don’t think it’s important to look into details as such,” Vettel said. “My contract is all fine for next year.”

The Mexican Grand Prix at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez was not a good experience for Ferrari in 2015.

Brimming with confidence from a good drive in Texas and his team’s season-long surge, Vettel qualified third but was knocked back by a tyre puncture on the first lap, then knocked out when aggressive driving led to a late crash.

Raikkonen also did not finish after breaking a rear axle in a bump with Williams driver Valterri Bottas.

It was the first time since 2006 that both Ferrari cars failed to finish a race.

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