23/11/2025

theSun on Sunday NOV 23, 2025

SPORTS 13

Lame Prancing Horse The best driver lineup (on paper) on the 2025 grid, but no wins in 21 races – what’s gone so wrong at Ferrari?

LANDO NORRIS maintained his charge towards a maiden Formula One crown yesterday by grabbing his third pole position in as many races at the Las Vegas Grand Prix. The British McLaren driver – who has surged into a 24-point lead in the drivers championship after wins in Brazil and Mexico – clocked a fastest time of one minute 47.934 seconds in slippery conditions. Red Bull’s reigning world champion Max Verstappen was second fastest in 1min 48.257sec with Williams’ Carlos Sainz third. Norris’s title rival and McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri will start fifth after finishing more than a second off the pace. In wet, treacherous conditions on the Sin City street circuit, the 26-year-old Norris produced a dazzling flying lap to snatch pole with three blistering sectors. “Boy that was stressful, stressful as hell,” a relieved Norris said after clinching pole. “I felt like the first few sectors were good, but it’s so slippery out there. As soon as you hit the curb a little bit like I did, you snap one way and then the other way and come close to hitting the wall,” he added. “So not the nicest of conditions. But I’m happy it stopped raining and we could get a good qualifying.” Norris, who had looked tentative in the final practice earlier yesterday, when he finished bottom of the timesheets, said he had not been expecting rain during qualifying. “I had a nap and was expecting it to be dry, and then woke up and saw it was raining and thought ‘Oh crap’,” he said. “It’s difficult to know what to expect.” Australia’s Piastri, whose title challenge has faltered in recent races, said: “There was a few things at the start of the lap that didn’t go great from an operational point of view. “I had to mess around with a few things that didn’t quite go how I wanted.” Red Bull ace Verstappen said that while he was normally comfortable driving in the wet, the combination of the Vegas circuit’s slick surface and the rain had made conditions doubly challenging. “It’s not fun, I can tell you that,” the Dutchman said. “I like to drive in the wet – this felt more like driving on ice. It took a long time to get the tires to work a little bit.” New Zealander Liam Lawson was sixth for Racing Bulls with Fernando Alonso seventh for Aston Martin and Isack Hadjar eighth in the other Racing Bulls. Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc qualified ninth and Pierre Gasly completed the top 10 for Alpine. Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton, who normally excels in wet conditions, will start last at a street circuit his team had hoped would favour them. Television footage showed him hitting a bollard, which may have become stuck under the car, before the seven-times world champion failed to beat the chequered flag for a final flying lap that he aborted. “Couldn’t get the tyres to work,” the Briton said over the radio. – AFP/Reuters Norris grabs ‘stressful’ Las Vegas pole

Ferrari’s driver Charles Leclerc reacts outside the track after crashing during the Dutch Grand Prix on Aug 31. – AFPPIC

not the first multiple world champion to come a cropper within the peculiar recent workings of Ferrari’s F1 team. Both Fernando Alonso (2010-2014) and Sebastian Vettel (2015-2020) arrived at Ferrari in the expectation of extending their championship tally, but amid a vast array of issues from governance and leadership down to raw speed and strategy mishaps, a title never materialised. In fact, it is worth mentioning that since the death of Enzo Ferrari in 1988, Ferrari have only enjoyed one sustained period of Formula 1 success, when the team was run by Jean Todt and Ross Brawn at the start of this century and, noticeably, very separate from the rest of the business. Michael Schumacher was the beneficiary then, with five consecutive titles. What does all this signal? Simply that the failings – historic at that – cannot be put at the feet of the drivers wedged in the cockpit, behind the wheel of a dud of a car. The microscope should, instead, be planted within the 5,000-worker base at Maranello. Next year, a new set of regulations offers a fresh opportunity for the Scuderia to get its act together. McLaren, Mercedes and Red Bull have all won multiple grands prix this year, with Ferrari flagging behind. In a search for answers, perhaps Elkann should look in the (rear-view) mirror, rather than throw unnecessary shade towards his star pairing. – The Independent

this weekend’s Las Vegas Grand Prix. We’ve been here before with Ferrari, but it’s never been quite as demoralising and underwhelming as this year. After sealing second in last year’s constructors’ championship and with Hamilton signing to the tune of £50 million-a-year (RM290m) in F1’s biggest-ever transfer, the tifosi were quite rightly in a state of pre-season frenzy at the beginning of the year. Would 2025 be the year the title drought – stretching back to Kimi Raikkonen in 2007 – was broken? Yet qualifying in race one is often the biggest truth teller. In Australia, Leclerc was seventh, Hamilton was eighth. By the end of a frenetic grand prix in the Melbourne rain, those spots had changed to eighth and 10th respectively. It has barely picked up in the months since. Peaks have been few and far between. In 21 grands prix, Ferrari have not won once and, more pertinently, they have not even been in contention. Fred Vasseur and his outfit are heading for their first winless year since 2021. Hamilton, in his 19th season in the sport, is on track for his first year without a podium finish. Elkann can criticise it all he likes, but Hamilton was right after Brazil: it has indeed been a “nightmare”. And while Hamilton’s level of performance has been a rung or two lower than Leclerc’s, the 40-year-old is

BY KIERAN JACKSON

FOR all intents and purposes, a few off the-cuff comments from John Elkann last week have caused quite the maelstrom in the helter-skelter world that is Scuderia Ferrari. And what is even more concrete, given the backlash triggered, is that the Ferrari chair’s interview very much did not have the intent, nor the purpose, desired. To recap, off the back of Ferrari’s victory in the World Endurance Championship (WEC) in Bahrain and, on the same weekend, Ferrari’s double DNF in the Brazilian Grand Prix, Elkann praised the engineers and mechanics at Ferrari F1 for their car improvements and rapid pit-stops in recent months. That, in itself, was questionable. But then came the main soundbite. “If we look at the rest, it’s not up to par,” he stated. “And we certainly have drivers who, it’s important that they focus on driving and talk less, because we still have important races ahead of us, and it’s not impossible to get second place.” Eh? It seemed almost too fanciful to be true. Was Elkann really calling out Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc – on paper the best driver lineup in the sport – for the team’s shortcomings this season? Not the dud of a car, which has been the fourth fastest on the grid? To their credit, with nine days to reflect, Hamilton and Leclerc did not bite back against their big boss ahead of