How Could Ferrari be Anyone's Favorite Team?

[Roy2]

Unless you are Italian, that is. Ferrari has always been my bete noir, my least favorite team. In the '50's they told a young Stirling Moss to come to a race (somewhere in Italy I think, anyway it involved considerable travelling), and when he got there, Ferrari had given the car to another driver. Moss swore that, if the opportunity ever came, he would never drive for them.

Throughout the decades it has been a deadly team to drive for. Fangio told Surtees (as related by Surtees in Speedvision's Champions), "John, pay attention. Things can be dangerous at Ferrari." Brian Redmond tells a story about leaving Ferrari after a season of F2, rather than accept an F1 ride for the following year. He said that he knew if he took it he would be dead.

A dreadfully mis-managed Ferrari fired Prost in 1991 for daring to criticize the car. For years afterwards, a race highlight for me was to see that red piece of **** go up in smoke. I enjoyed a lot of highlights.

Staring in the 1996 season Ferrari decided to buy their way to a world title. They bought the best driver and the best available technical and management help. To maximize their chances, Ferrari wrote a pair of contracts, perhaps the most shameful in F1 history, designed to reduce the teamate to servant status, and to give as many of his points as possible to Schumacher. What Montemezemolo said to put Barichello in his place shouldn't surprise anyone.

Yes, I agree that Ferrari is a front line team. I agree that F1 needs the red cars, that the grids and races wouldn't be the same without them. But only because, for the sake of the contest and the drama, grand prix racing needs a villain. Ferrari provides that element like no other team could.

[Ralf's Girl]

I agree. I think that the choice they have made to have a number one and number two driver is absolutely ridiculous. And makes them no friends in the pitlane (see Spa 99).

[Gerryl]

You got to admit you either love'm or hate'm. I think there really screwing themselfs with this TGF must win the title thing. However life without the Prancing horse would'nt be the same now would it? Eh Murph!!

Ger

[Minardi fan]

I agree too - it's beyond me how anyone can support them. Yes I cheered for Irvine but only because I love an underdog getting the success, and I cheered Salo simply because I always have.

But I will never ever support Ferrari OR Schumacher.

[Liz]

Now that Lotus is gone, Ferrari is F1. Not the people who drive the cars - the CARS. The Two Red Cars have been F1 as long as I can remember, and they always will be, no matter what kind of idiots they gather around them.

Walter Wolf said once that when Jody won for him it was "Jody won in a Wolf." When Jody won for Ferrari it was "Ferrari won, driven by Jody."

Yes, at the present (and at some other times) the people who have been gathered round Ferrari have not been the people I would have chosen, and they are at present (except Rubens) some of the lowest and least sportsmanlike people the sport has ever turned up - except for Ron Dennis - but it still remains that for me the romance in F1 belongs to the Two Red Cars.

Sorry, but I will always love Ferrari. Until Lotus comes back anyway.

[Valve Bounce]

Look at it this way: without Ferrari, we wouldn't have anything to feel really good about when someone else wins.

[Redneck]

Roy2 and company-

Funny... you seem to be the minority. Every race I see, no matter where it is, there is a sea of red flags with the prancing horse on them. Sounds like sour grapes to me.

Forza Ferrari!

[Jay]

Roy2, you might also like the red colour or the logo.

Strangely, Redneck is right in that they are by far the most popular team. They have and sell more merchandise than any other team even though it is the most expensive.

As for Sour Grapes, What is there to be sour about? They have not had a driver win the WC in nearly 20 years even though they have had TGF for nearly 5 years now!

Also, they are a one driver team.

[Roy2]

Sour grapes? What have they got that I want? I don't envy them all their world championships since 1979, or the billions they spent losing them. And they can have their tifosi too.

However, we will have Ferrari and the tifosi whether we will or no, and their day will come I suppose.

[Nuvolari]

I would hazard a guess that no team in motorsport (just as in any other form of human endeavor) has conducted itself in a totally admirable way. This is meant as an explanation, not an excuse.

For all its shortcomings -- real and perceived -- Ferrari defines F1.

[Liz]

Right on - McLaren's Whine-O-Meter is going to have to be recalibrated pretty soon as it's been getting some pretty hard use lately, and weren't we recently discussing whether or not Benetton had got away with traction control cheating on a wholesale basis? Why pick on Ferrari, except for the usual socialist reasons that they have a lot of money and people seem to like them?

[Ralf's Girl]

Still, you've got to admit that Ferrari have cheated their drivers out of wins in order to continually secure the services of one Mr M. Schumacher.

Of course, F1 wouldn't be the same without Ferrari, and I'm not denying that. It's not something you can deny - it's fact. But that wasn't what the topic was about. It was about why people actually support Ferrari. I think the point Roy2 was trying to get across is that their tactics are laughable, and their treatment of number two drivers (although this actually applies to any team Schumacher has driven for as number one) appears to be to psychologically destroy them until they are mere shadows behind their team-mate.

(Roy2, you'll have to tell me if I'm right, because I don't know if I am!)

[Murph]

I was going to describe why Ferrari has been my favorite team from the first time I saw Jacky and Clay at Mosport Park during the 1972 Canadian GP. The blood red machines….. the cries of “basta basta”, from the crowds at Moss Corner and along the Andretti Straight, the sound of those V-12’s reverberating through the hills and valleys of Ontario….that the Scuderia is the only team that builds the whole car/engine package. For the past 29 years I have been a tifosi……there have good times (Niki, Gilles, Jody, Lole, Alboreto, Gerhard’s win at Monza, IL Leon, Alain, Michael and now Rubens triumph at Hockenheim)…I’ve been lucky enough to be present at the Glen for wins by Niki (‘75), Lole (’78), and Gilles(‘79) …and watching Niki clinch the WDC in ’77…. I saw Gilles Ferrari debut at Mosport in ’77, and Montreal for Gilles magic moments (’78, ’79, “81) and Michaels win in ’97……… But I have been a tifosi through the bad as well…(1973 season, watching Clay lose the ’74 WDC to Emmo at the Glen, the ‘Ring in 76, 1980 debacle with Michelin, Imola and the treachery of Pironi, and Zolder ‘82 )..yes there have been lots of bad times to go with the good..)

Anyway… I was going to describe why Ferrari is my favorite …warts and all… but I realized that it would be a waste of my time as most of the posters on this thread are the new “fans” of f1 and for the most part do not have a clue. I was searching though for a word that would best describe my feelings about some of the statements in the thread….soooooo I looked in my Oxford dictionary and “viola”….there it was…

Pa-thet-ic adj. 1. arousing pity, sadness, or contempt

Yeah…..that’s the best description I can think of for some of the garbage in this thread..

(1) The question first of all is pathetic…….doesn't anybody have an understanding of the history of motor racing and the role that Enzo and his marque have played in it. Liz hit the nail on the head… "it’s the cars"…. The cars are the idols. There is nothing “strange” that Ferrari has more supporters than any other current team…. It is a national team… it has a much longer history than any of the “garagistas”, it is a team that evokes passion, it is the link between motor racing’s past to the present. To question why any one (except Italians) would be a fan of the Scuderia is ridiculous. If you are a fan of a certain team Roy2 that’s fine… heap praise on your favorite team….…. But to denigrate the tifosi…is pathetic to state that " it's beyond me how anyone can support them".. ….is to be a fool.
(2) The fact that someone would take pleasure at someone else’s (team or individual) misfortune… whether it is over a period of “years”, or cheering wildly at Michael’s injury at Silverstone, Mika’s crash at Imola, or at the events at the first corner at Austria this year …is just pathetic…..and simply beyond my comprehension. I guess I was raised differently….. thank god.
(3) When one issues a statement…. It helps if one corrborates that statement with facts…. I can think of 3 instances in the past 5 years when a Ferrari was leading late in a race… and the team made “the call” for the leading Ferrari to give way to his teammate giving the teammate the win.... A) Suzuka in ’97 Irvine to Schumacher B) Hockenheim ’99 Salo to Irvine C) Malaysia in ’99 Schumacher to Irvine. Have no idea where you got this....
“Still, you've got to admit that Ferrari have cheated their drivers out of wins in order to continually secure the services of one Mr M. Schumacher.” ……… hmmmmmmm.

(4) I’m not crazy about team orders… and #1 drivers and #2 drivers…. But they have been part of f1 since f1 has been around. “Shameful contracts” you say… how about Lotus in 1978… Mario to win & Ronnie to stay in 2nd unless Mario has problems. It might be “shameful” to some/most in this forum…. But if they are good enough for Colin Chapman, then…….no #1 & #2 drivers.. Patrese was a #2 to Nigel at Williams… a situation in which Patrick Head reminded Riccardo on occasion. News flash kids...F1 is a business… teams have the right to run their team the way they see fit.

I will be at Indy this September for the USGP….. wearing my Gilles & Enzo T-shirt with my JV “Lucky Strike” hat…… screaming “basta…basta” as the Ferrari’s flash by (hopefully beyond the first corner)…… but this old timer will cheer (not quite as loudly….but respectfully) ALL the teams and their drivers…. I will leave you with this thought I taught my students for 30 years.....

“Knowledge without thought is a trap… as thought without knowledge is a snare” by Chiu Kung

Murph

[Bononi]

I have the same opinion as Liz. My favourite team ever was Lotus, and as she said that means F1.
There are fans of Ferrari all around the world, and I never saw such a passion for any other team.

[Schume]

I agree 100% Murph and Liz on this on.
Ferrari is about the Red Cars, the Tifosi and most of all Enzo, the man who kicked it all off.

Maybe that's because I'm old enough to remember.

I've no gripe against people who are new to F1 and have a different view.

But Ferrari is the marque which laid the foundations of what we see today on tracks around the world.

Love them or hate them, the Red Cars and the hoards of Tifosi will always be there through thick and thin, long after Schumacher, Todt et al are gone.

Forza Ferrari....

[Ralf's Girl]

I have nothing against Ferrari as a team, just the tactics they employ to win. I have said it already and I'll say it again - drivers have been cheated out of wins because of their policies.
I am new to F1 (I wasn't around in the 70s to see the racing that has been referred to on this thread), but I do appreciate that Ferrari are the foundation F1 team, and will carry on because F1 couldn't exist without those red (or do I mean orange?) cars. What I am saying is that their tactics and policies are ridiculous and all their plans centre around one driver and only one driver. Witness Schumacher last year. Ferrari were lucky that Irvine was in the position of taking the championship back to Hakkinen, otherwise it would have been bye bye yet another world title much earlier in the season.
The rate they are going, if such a problam arises again, their number two driver will be too far back in the championship to be in with a realistic chance of winning it.

[Neil C]

In the early days of aviation warfare (WW1), it was the custom to salute your opponent, whether you were the victor about to head home, or the vanquished about to go down in flames. Similar chivalry existed in F1. I'm not sure when it dissapeared but the sport is the poorer for it.

I'm not a Ferrari fan, but I get no satisfaction from belittling their achievment in motorsports, or thier fans. They have a right to be proud of their team. Ferrari has spent years as also rans, but they didnt give up and their fans didnt either. Their history is full of examples of arrogance and heavy handedness, but it is also rich with passionate devotion to F1 which has made it a better sport regardless of who your favorites are.

"Shut up and die like an aviator"-Steve Earle

[Gerard]

Roy2, I have to disagree with all the arguments you mentioned in your post.
Let's look at them one by one.

You mention a story about Stirling Moss. You say 'in the 50's' and 'somewhere in Italy.' If you cannot come up with the date and the whereabouts of this story, I suggest you verify it before mentioning it.
If you had done this, you would also have known Enzo Ferrari indeed snubbed him, although unwittingly. Even Stirling Moss knew this and there has never been any animosity between Moss and Ferrari.
Moss liked driving British, that is British cars. He once said: 'Better to lose honorably in a British car than win in a foreign one.'

Your second statement is that Ferrari is a deadly team to drive for.
Well for your information, motorracing is a dangerous sport.
I suppose you formed your opinion on figures rather than facts. Yes, there have been people killed in Formula 1.
Since 1950, thirty Formula One drivers have been killed, six of them driving a Ferrari.
Here are the real facts:
1957 - testing at Modena, Eugenio Castellotti went out in wet conditions and crashed the car. Reason is unknown.
1958 - French GP, Luigi Musso was chasing team mate Hawthorn when his car ran wide and he crashed. Reason - driver error.
1958 - German GP, Peter Collins made a judgement error, clipping a bank and crashing the car. Reason - driver error.
1961 - Italian GP, Wolfgang von Trips. Jim Clark came out of the Ferrari's slipstream in an attempt to pass, but von Trips moved over too, clipping the front wheel of Clark's car and crashed into the crowd. Reason - driver error.
1967 - Monaco GP, Lorenzo Bandini clipped the chicane which started the Ferrari rolling. Reason - driver error.
1982 - Belgium GP, Gilles Villeneuve in practice touched the car of Jochen Mass. Reason - driver error.
As you can see, only the death of Castellotti cannot be explained, all the others were driver errors and Ferrari had nothing to do with it.

Your third statement is that Ferrari fired Prost because he criticized the car.
To me this is something I can accept. If Prost had any criticism about Ferrari, he should have take this up with them in order to solve his problems and not bring this out in the open.
What if you went telling everybody the company you work for su*ks. Do you think your boss would pet you on the head?

You also said Ferrari started to buy their way to a world title. Well isn't this what it's all about. Buying the best driver and the best technical and management help?
I can see nothing wrong with that. I bet if Minardi had the money to do this, they would also do it.
And about the contracts, yes, they did write them in the way you describe. And how do we know this? Because Eddie Irvine told us so. But do we know what's written in the contracts of the other teams? No, we don't, because they don't talk about it.
Team orders have been around since the first race of the world championship in 1950. Read Murph's post again, he mentions a few of them.

And talking about a villain. Why is Ferrari a villain?
Are you sure you're talking about Ferrari here? Or are you talking about the antics of a certain M. Schumacher?
In that case let me tell you this, Schumacher is not Ferrari and Ferrari is not Schumacher.
As a matter of fact there are a whole lot of tifosi who don't even like Schumacher. Being a tifosi doesn't mean adoring the driver, it means adoring the car, Ferrari.
Have you ever heard of the 'water bottle row', concerning the Lotus' of Colin Chapman. Have you ever heard of the 'Arrows/Shadow affair', have you ever heard why Tyrrell was excluded from the 1984 season? And these were just the cases that came to the surface.
If you call Ferrari villains, then I'm sure Formula One has seen a lot of villains in it's 50 year history.

A history of which Ferrari has been part of from the beginning, through good and bad times.
I will always be a Ferrari tifoso, whoever drives the car.
And if you say you would like to see those red cars go up in a puff of smoke, I don't think you fully understand the essence of motorracing.

[Minardi fan]

A passion for racing remains in only 2 teams on the grid.

Here's a hint: They both have yellow cars.

[TimD]

Well, I was around in the seventies, enjoying the races that Murph describes so eloquently. But I came at it from another viewpoint.

Ferrari was the car to beat. They were so obviously the most professional team in the series, even to me, knee-high to a hubcap.

There was nothing, nothing in the world better than going into school on a Monday, still riding the high because Jackie Stewart's Tyrrell had won, or even better, because James Hunt's Hesketh had beaten the Ferrari.

But wishing a DNF on the red cars? Never in a million years. They were the reason for the Cosworth powered kit cars to go racing. They were the yardstick. If your Tyrrell or Lotus or Hesketh or McLaren could take the fight to a Ferrari on Sunday afternoon, then you knew you had really achieved something. On that were reputations forged.

Right now, I have to say that Ferrari is a lot more lovable than their chief opposition in 2000. For that reason, and the fact that I respect Michael Schumacher as a driver over and above any other racing today, I am still keen on the idea of a Ferrari championship year.

But I'm not a Ferrari fan. You won't catch me wearing a prancing horse on my hat, or carrying a red flag. The only red and yellow thing I have jumped up and down and cheered for lately is a Ford Capri at Oulton Park. And that's another story altogether.

[Liz]

Hear hear! Formula One didn't start with Senna and it won't end when Schumacher M. retires. With all the history available on the net as well as in books, perhaps Roy2 would find a little research enjoyable. Anyway now he knows why there are some of us who will always support the Two Red Cars. Until Lotus comes back anyway.

I'm glad there are other people who remember when pilotes were gentlemen and their fans were fans of motor racing, and could cheer a brilliant drive by a rival as well as one by their own champion. I have the feeling that if the Villeneuve/Arnoux duel was to be played out today, most of the people watching would be disappointed that both men finished the race without a big crash, and at least half the people would be jeering at one or the other of them at the end of the day. I'm only sorry for y'all that you missed it.

[Bononi]

Gerard... you took my breath away ! That is all about to love F1 ! After all this years watching this sport, and most of the times feeling like an alien, it is good to know that many people share the same feelings and experiences about F1.
I suggest everyone who is under 6 years of watching F1 to buy some books about F1 history...

[Valve Bounce]

OK, I admit I sometimes put in frivolous posts for a bit of fun - no harm meant. But these are some very long serious posts.
Murph: you were at the ring in 76, wow!! Since that day, I have always admired Niki. His Italian GP drive a short month later said it all. His balaclava was covered with blood after the race.
Gerard - I seem to have missed the water bottle thing about Chapman as I was working in places with no F1 news whatsoever. What happened? Also, why did Ken miss out in 84??
To be serious, I must say that motor racing fans who want to be identified with F1 often buy Ferrari stuff, whether they are Ferrari fans or not. I wear a Ferrari ski cap.
There is one team which I considered always honourable - Rob Walkers that Sterling raced for.
I do feel good when one Ferrari gets a DNF - guess who's!! Not because it is a Ferrari, but because I don't like the Fellow's ethics. I think the Jerez incident really robbed me of the pleasure of watching him drive. I could not want him to do well afterwards. Same as how some people just don't like beetroot, even though it's red.
Sorry for the long post, guys. Normally I prefer a short one with a bit of humour, but things really got serious on this thread.

[jarama]

Being a F1 fan since my childhood -my first F1 race live was the Spanish G.P.'73-, I had my preferences for the then mighty Elf Team Tyrrell and Jackie Stewart, but ever loved the sport and the pure racing above all.

Then, I've supported Jody Scheckter, Patrick Depailler, Gilles Villeneuve, Ronnie Peterson, Stephan Bellof, Alain Prost, Gerhard Berger, Jean Alesi, Mika Hakkinen...

I've never been a true Ferrari tiffossi, but NEVER I've been glad to see one Ferrari DNF... but from Jerez'97 onwards if it's TGF's car.

I like Ferrari as every other team, though I dislike his nr.1-demiGod-driver. I'm feeling very happy with Rubens win last week. And next sunday I'll be at the Hungaroring to cheer the McBoys, PdlR, Gené, Rubens, Fisi or so, up to 21 drivers... there's only one I dislike, and it's the driver, not the team, so, if Rubens wins... I'll say Forza Ferrari!

[angst]

Ferrari I don't want to see fail. Schumacher I am quite happy to watch suffer from the same ethics he has based his career on. I would be happy as Larry if Rubinho won every race from now till the end of the season, Ferrari need a WDC and as long as it's not MS I will gleefully celebrate that long awaited victory. Somebody quoted Walter Wolf earlier on this thread when he said that if Jody Scheckter won in a Wolf then it was Scheckter who won the race drivig a Wolf. But when Scheckter won in a Ferrari it was a Ferrari win, with Scheckter driving.
I belive that Enzo himself would not tolerate the current situation because if Schumacher wins it is viewed as Schumacher winning driving a Ferrari.
Scuderia Ferrari have been involved in Grands Prix now for 70 or so years, and I wouldn't want that to stop, but at the moment they are a pale imitation of that historic team.
That's my personal opinion.