Red Mist: What a difference a year makes for Ferrari!

My grandfather always used to tell me, don’t be a hippo, be the elephant. Big ears, small mouth. Listen, pay attention, and don’t talk too much.

It's something we wished Ferrari would have done a year ago. Remember those days? Mattia Binotto, Laurent Mekies and all those fools? Promising everything. Delivering nothing. We cried as Ferrari. A far, far cry from the great old days, never mind.

Remember them? Days when Michael Schumacher, Luca di Montezemolo and Ferrari, Jean Todt, Ross Brawn, Rory Byrne and the team was unstoppable. Unbeatable. And so good at it.

They never promised much in those days to us Tifosi. If anything they made things seem worse than they were leading up to a race. But come Saturday and Sunday, they just delivered. Every Saturday. Every Sunday.

Rhetoric is vital. The message you send, and what you deliver, are all that matters to the fan, the customer, and the observer. Back in the early 2000s, Ferrari generally under-promised, and overdelivered. Sadly, that great PR machine collapsed over the years. Reached an all-time low under Binotto. Red Mist cried. We all dreamed of the Good Old Days.

Roll on through the purge. Now, barely a year later, it’s all changed now. The Scuderia has rediscovered how to under-promise. And over-deliver. Just like the old days. Remember what Charles Leclerc said after Friday's practice in Mexico? “Oh, it will be a huge surprise if we do pole, but never say never,” he groaned. “This weekend we are too far away.”

A few hours later, pole man Leclerc came across bemused: "To be honest, I did not expect to be on pole. We thought we were lacking, but for some reason, once we put everything together, it went well, the new tyres gained a lot and we are 1-2!”

Was he really bemused? Or is Ferrari back to its good old Schumacher-esque mind tricks?

Sure, this weekend at the Mexico City Grand Prix, wayward local hero Sergio Perez robbed Charles' chance of making a race of it as the wild Red Bull deranged the Ferrari’s front alignment in that patriotic pounce. So we’ll never know if Leclerc could have held on to Max. But the big takeaway here is how Ferrari is going racing as we ease out of 2023 and start looking at the coming ’24 season.

Has Maranello swung 180 degrees from the big-mouth small-ear hippo approach to the big-ear small-mouth elephant way of doing things? Reminds Red Mist of how things were done at Maranello in those great Schumacher days at Ferrari.

Of course, there’s still much to do. We need a car that can match and beat the Red Bull at every level. But the signs are there for everything else. Our strategy, useless a year ago, is now more good than bad. There are a few pitlane faux-pas that seemed endemic a year back. And they under-promise. And over-deliver.

Most of all, Red Mist really enjoys Fred Vasseur’s increasingly positive demeanor these days. Not only are those all very good signs, but Ferrari seems to be back to how it did it in the Good Old Days. Maranello appears to be on the comeback trail. Keep on trekking guys, let’s do this!