Villeneuve: Vettel, Alonso failed. Hamilton may make Ferrari great again

Ferrari will always be F1's greatest team, but what they REALLY want at Maranello is to be winning races regularly and winning titles again, like those Great first five seasons of this century with Michael Schumacher and the mighty team behind him then.

But stats show that Ferrari have not won an F1 title since Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen combined to win the 2008 Contsructors' title. The team's last Driver's title was a year earlier with Raikkonen. Since then, it's been a decade and a half without winning one of the two most important trophies in motorsport.

And it has not been from lack of trying. After paying off Raikkonen to depart, the Italian team signed double F1 World Champ Fernando Alonso to fly the flag. They came desperately close but no 'cigar' so to speak.

Sebastian Vettel followed but could not add to the four titles he won at Red Bull. Neither of the two greats of contemporary F1 could bring home a coveted F1 title to Maranello.

But that could change in 2025, as Hamilton becomes a Ferrari driver for the swansong of his glorious career in the top flight, according to Villeneuve: "They tried with Vettel, but Vettel was burnt out by the time he joined Ferrari. Alonso had almost worked out, but it became too chaotic.

"Lewis could be the one to put that past of Ferrari behind finally. This might be Ferrari version 2.0. you get the biggest driver of all time joining the biggest team of all time. It's hard to make it any better than that, at a time when Ferrari needs to start winning again," reckoned Jacques.

Villeneuve continued: "They need something good to happen because they've spent the last 10-15 years 'close but not close enough' and every time they bring in either a world champion or a young driver like [Charles] Leclerc or [Carlos] Sainz or someone.

"And they go at it for two or three years, but the chaos never stops inside the team. It carries on. Every two years, the team principal gets changed," lamented Villeneuve, whose late father - F1 legend Gilles Villeneuve - is a Ferrari legend.

History shows that since 2014, Ferrari have had four F1 team TPs Marco Mattiacci (2014), Maurizio Arrivabene (2015–2018), Mattia Binotto (2019–2022) and Frédéric Vasseur since the start of 2023.

The late Sergio Marchionne set back the team with ill-thought-out planning and naive thinking, while committing to make the Scuderia truly "Made in Italy" by hiring the cream of the country's engineering talent as the 'foreigners' departed. History shows that backfired mightily.

Now, under John Elkann, Ferrari are referring to the Luca di Montezemolo template. Opting for another Frenchman (mirroring their Jean Todt-led Golden Era) to take the team forward. Marchionne's "Made in Italy" experiment bombed. Now, with the biggest 'fish' in F1 netted they are also reportedly 'fishing' for Englishman Adrian Newey to be part of their Hamilton-inspired Super Team.

Villeneuve recalled the ill-fated Marchionne era: "For a time, Ferrari was trying to be only Italian, so they got rid of everything that wasn't Italian and that didn't work out. So now they're starting to hire non-Italians again and rebuilding an international team, trying to get the best engineers, the best of everything, wherever they're from."

"With Ferrari, it's always exciting because there's always news, and if you get Lewis in there and all this mega-complex situation, this could be the thing that settles everything down for a bit. Giving Ferrari what they've been missing as a base so they can actually move forward," ventured Villeneuve.

Ferrari have historically hired experienced drivers, even F1 World Champions, as they did so successfully with Micahel Schumacher, a double F1 title winner when he joined Ferrari and added five more F1 titles during his spell at Maranello. They also hired Alain Prost with great expectations, but that came to nought, ditto Alonso and Vettel.

Looking ahead, Villeneuve is intrigued by Hamilton's move to Ferrari: "It will be interesting to see if Lewis manages to do what Alonso and Vettel didn't manage to do. I never thought Vettel would do it. I thought at the time Alonso might be able to do it because he got close and he was a hard fighter, and Lewis might be the one to do it now.

"And also, Jock [Clear] is in the team, and I'm curious if Jock will become his engineer or not because that would be very profitable for Lewis, the logical winning combination at Ferrari," added Villeneuve, who was engineered by Jock when he won his 1997 F1 title with Williams.