You may be thinking: how did a car that lost the 2019 Formula 1 World Championship by 235 points win this award? And you’d be right to do so.
But here’s the thing: this is no honour, but it is us recognising that no car defined the championship more than the SF90.
Possibly the most erratic car of the decade, it seemed like the clear-cut best package on the grid after testing. Then the season started and it was all over the place. In Bahrain, it was mere laps from winning when an engine cylinder failed. A few weeks later in Barcelona, it was losing four-tenths to the Mercedes W10 in the slow corners of the final sector. It nearly won in Canada and Austria.
It was a minute off the lead in Hungary. It dominated on the power tracks of Spa and Monza… And then did the same on the twisty confines of Singapore. Scored a front-row lockout at Suzuka. Finished the season an afterthought in Abu Dhabi. It was simply one prancing horse the Scuderia was unable to tame.
Second Opinion
I will throw it out there for argument’s sake that Lewis Hamilton in a Ferrari would have been World Champion. They really had their best chance this year but they grossly miscalculated the advantage they thought they had after typically stellar preseason testing early in the year.
They were ambushed by Mercedes who hit the ground running early on in the season, caught Ferrari flatfooted and by the time the championship was going into recess the title race was done. But not because the SF90 was bad, but rather the team failed to maximise the advantage they had, or their drivers tripped up.
On song, fully dialled up the Ferrari SF90 was a formidable piece of kit, title-winning for sure in what was an unusual case of the car being let down by the team.