Red Mist: Every cloud has a silver lining

Maranello must wait two more years to get that right! It took 21 years and the Michael Schumacher Dream Team in the year 2000 to break the hiatus from when Jody Scheckter was champion in 1979 for Ferrari.

It doesn’t seem likely Ferrari will win a grand prix this year. But stranger things have happened. And Ferrari did win, albeit Lewis’ victory was just a sprint in China. Still, he won. The latter half of 2025 has been horrible, however. Team performance slid, then Johnnygate when the boss controversially chastised his drivers in public.

So it’s been a cloudy season all round, possibly heightened by an unnecessary expectation on Hamilton to miraculously lift the team. Instead it went the other way, leaving the tifosi at dementia levels of depression, the type when most forget everything.

But wait, there is a sliver of a lining on that red cloud. “Something was missing this weekend, because at the end of the day we decided to move on 2026 already in April,” capo Vasseur revealed in Qatar. In other words, Ferrari stopped development on this year’s unloved SF-25 to concentrate all its resources on its forthcoming 2026 car and the new rules set, way back 7 months ago.

Now that’s big news. Teams are already limited by F1’s tight budget cap and aero testing restrictions before even considering the impending rule changes. So with McLaren and Red Bull fully focused on this year’s title, it remains most likely that has taken away from their ’26 focus. Mercedes appears to be on a 50-50 approach. But ’26 wildcard Aston Martin is also all-in on 2026, now with Newey and Honda.

So, the front of the early 2026 grid may look quite different, and far redder than how we see it today. Getting back to the boss, Vasseur said recently: “We never believed that we’d catch McLaren before the end of this year,” Fred continued. “That was the rationale behind our call to rather concentrate on the 2026 package. I honestly believe it’s the right decision.

“Still, it's difficult to keep the team motivated, knowing full well that we would not develop this car. So I understand the emotion. Charles probably pushed harder to finish P8 than on some weekends when he won. They put so much energy into the weekend, speaking on the radio, in the TV pen, those are emotional comments.

"That's life. To struggle sometimes is part of the game, part of the life of the team. It's been like this from mid-season and it will be like this also in Abu Dhabi. So motivation may not be the right word. Maybe we must rather look more at raising expectations once we’re finished racing this year," teased Vasseur.

The drivers are on board with this plan to take short-term pain for long-term gain. “The second-half results are not too surprising,” Charles Leclerc shrugged. “Knowing we could not develop the car made it a lot harder to match our rivals, so I really hope that our vision to put all our resources into 2026 will pay off next year!”

“I wanted the team to move to next year's car and I wanted to make sure we started early, so it’s all part of the plan,” Lewis Hamilton concluded. “So our early shift to develop our 2026 car is not at all an issue to me.”

There’s no guarantee Ferrari will be anywhere close to being world champions for the first time in over a generation in 2026. But at least we now know that the team is fully committed to pulling its change to the new regulations off best of all. No matter what Johnny may say…