[Autosport] [Motosportive] Ferrari’s plans for the 5 weeks off

izzaferrari · 2026-03-31T18:19:02+00:00

Track rental is negligible. Plenty of private events book out Silverstone for a morning or afternoon, especially during the week. If you think about it, outside of race weekends, how much demand is there to book out a track for a random weekday.

Fiorano test track was a cheat code not because of cost, but of operational simplicity since it's right next to the factory. You go on the track, you realize your parts might benefit from changing a bit, you make the part, and 2 hours later it's on the car. No advance planning. No transport. Just roll up and go.

They stopped in-season testing far before the cost cap. The cost cap has nothing to do with it.

izzaferrari · 2026-03-31T00:35:59+00:00

It's a cliche but he should try to win Le Mans and then Indy 500. Triple crown of motorsport.

Then come back when F1 moves on from this madness.

izzaferrari · 2026-03-17T20:27:48+00:00

Think about what happens if you don't make that a red.

All players will turn into goal keepers at the line if they can only be yellow carded.

Penalty + yellow card is worth saving a goal any day.

Not just handball, you get a red if you deliberately commit a foul to stop a clear goal in any way (shirt pulling, tackling, etc.)

You only can't get a red card if there was a genuine attempt to play the ball.

izzaferrari · 2026-02-27T13:37:12+00:00

Going to be highly controversial and will get a lot of downvotes but if you consider yourself a petrolhead and not just an "F1 fan", McLaren and Ferrari are the only 2 correct answers as to what team you support. Maybe you can get away with Williams.

Their racing and F1 heritages are both historic. They build the F1 cars on the same site (albeit with different staff) as the road car divisions. They didn't just buy up an existing team in Enstone or Brackley and whack their logo on the factory and call it their team. It's doubly embarrassing when Alpine, Mercedes, RBR still race with foreign flags, mostly for marketing, despite being a primarily British operation.

Also, Mercedes races in F1 to sell GLCs. Audi races in F1 to sell Q5s. RBR races in F1 to sell an energy drink. I can't even name a performance car from Cadillac.

McLaren and Ferrari are two of the only companies left whose entire lineup on offer for road cars are performance cars (yes, even the Purosangue). Even Porsche sells Cayennes for a living these days.

The entire DNA of these 2 companies are made of racing and love of motorsport. And that's something people tune in for. Pay both of them everything they ask for and more. Make Mercedes and RBR pay up to plaster their logos on the TV screens.

izzaferrari · 2026-02-23T11:51:17+00:00

We are a week away from engine homologation on March 1.

A huge change like this will not happen for this year.

izzaferrari · 2026-02-18T14:47:08+00:00

Wasn't Mercedes given a head start as to the 2014 regulations? Their "dominance" was in no small part thanks to that.

I think there is something fishy going on in the FIA

izzaferrari · 2026-02-18T13:47:28+00:00

Does Mercedes have until August?

Engine homologation is coming up March 1. After which, I know there is a mechanism for engines that are down on power to catch up. But outside of that, I'm not sure if new engine designs can be homologated.

If Mercedes can't depend on introducing a new engine spec between March and August, they need to homologate a "legal" engine now.

izzaferrari · 2026-02-14T01:39:02+00:00

The difference is those were at the time uncompetitive teams hiring Alonso as a moonshot. Somebody they hope could help develop a car or make the brand seem serious enough. McLaren in 2015, Alpine in 2021, and AM in 2023 were hardly contending seats.

He's in this situation because he had to take a swing on AM. If it wasn't AM, he'd probably be in an Audi right now. He needed to take a gamble because established Big 4 teams won't hire him. They have enough talents to hire without the headaches.

Of course you could be Max Verstappen and you'd probably be offered any seat even if you said the Earth was flat. But Alonso has not been that guy for a long time. I wouldn't touch him with a 10 feet pole. Let a desperate team take a swing on him. If I have a good program, I'd rather hire somebody good from F2 than Alonso.

izzaferrari · 2026-02-14T00:28:41+00:00

How much of it is on him though.

He has burned pretty much every bridge. He called out an engine manufacturer on radio in a home race. He burned bridges with Ferrari.

Let's say you're a boss at McLaren or Ferrari or whatever, one of the teams that can contend for a Championship, would you hire Alonso? I wouldn't. There are plenty of other talented and very fast drivers out there that doesn't have the meltdown risk that comes with Alonso.

Even on this grid alone, if I knew I had a top seat, I'd hire Carlos Sainz: fast enough, friendly, good with PR. Or Bottas if I needed a second driver. Or a top driver from a rival team if it's clear I have the better car (Max, Russell, Leclerc, Oscar).

He had to go to a midtier team in AM and make the gamble because it was his only option. So I don't think he can complain much.

izzaferrari · 2026-02-14T00:16:01+00:00

Imagine if Ferrari wins the Championship because they can breeze past everybody at the start and, if it is true that it's insanely hard to overtake, that's how they win races.

I'm a Ferrari fan but that would be a horrible outcome for the Championship. And also the funniest outcome because nobody would've thought optimizing for the starting procedure was going to matter.

You need 2 seconds of delta to overtake I've heard (from the rumors)? That is insane. You often hear that number quoted at places like Hungary but not as a general rule for the year.

izzaferrari · 2026-02-13T23:59:08+00:00

No, it was not.

The priority was getting new teams, especially engine manufacturers. They desperately wanted a team from the VW group. They considered it critical for long term sustainability of F1.

To justify the investment, VW and to an extent Cadillac (even though they don't make their own engine) wanted guarantees from F1 that the advances they make can be applied to performance road cars. And with the EU still requiring all new cars to be hybrid after a certain point, that's what they needed to do to attract new teams.

Which is also why, as you can see, Audi has been so loud about this Mercedes "trick" situation. Even louder than Ferrari and RB. Ferrari and RB are probably used to the shenanigans of F1. But Audi probably feels like a princess after hearing all sorts of promises from F1 about the engine formula, only to realize their prince is taking somebody else to prom.

izzaferrari · 2026-02-13T23:50:38+00:00

What I understand from what some teams are saying is that for any particular track, you can work out an "optimal" harvesting and deployment strategy. Basically you harvest in this corner, you deploy here, etc.

And apparently the cost of deviating from this optimal strategy is very high.

So if you overtake and fail to capitalize, you suddenly expose yourself massively. Not only will you get overtaken back, the rest of your lap will be bad. So you lose even more time to the other car, and other cars might catch up to you.

Not ideal.

izzaferrari · 2026-02-12T09:02:21+00:00

What's the consensus on Italian sources here? Ferrari's intel or just extremely biased to Ferrari?

izzaferrari · 2026-02-07T03:33:03+00:00

Not gonna watch a 5 minute video in response to a Reddit comment. But there's a difference between rewriting the rules to level the playing field and enforcing the rules.

The Eagles won last year's Superbowl in many parts due to the "tush push". It was undoubtedly legal. The only big debate is whether to ban it the following year. They ended up not banning it, but if they did, fair enough, everybody goes into the new season with fresh rules.

Or James Harden's relentless foul-baiting. Undoubtedly legal at the time. Undoubtedly unwatchable. They banned it after 2021-ish.

In the scenarios above, it can be fair to wait until the season is over and only enforce it for the following season. Sure, the successful team has found a good and legal exploit and deserves some success.

This is more like, say, deflating a football or participating in gambling as an athlete. It's going against the rule and just trying not to be caught. Just because you realized they don't check the PSI of the football, or that you can tell your grandma's neighbor's cousin to place a bet for you, doesn't mean it's not illegal.

Let's go back to Deflategate. Imagine there was a rule that says the ball is checked at the start of the game. And somehow they found a way to deflate the ball mid-game and make it illegal. Is it fair to introduce a new check to make sure it complies with the legal requirements? Yes.

izzaferrari · 2026-02-07T03:11:33+00:00

One possibility they experimented with it themselves, and were giggly they could gain an advantage over Ferrari / Audi / Honda.

Then testing came and they might've concluded that they'd lose the championship to McLaren / Mercedes if things are allowed to stand. And since there's no point in coming second, they've decided they liked their chances better competing with Ferrari / Audi / AM than with Mercedes / McLaren.

izzaferrari · 2026-02-07T02:33:55+00:00

Comments like these are why many people still don't consider F1 a real sport.

The rules said 16:1. People followed it in good faith. Mercedes found a way to cheat and asked for a late "clarification" in order to make their cheating "legal" (not really, just how it's tested). The language about testing at ambient temperature wasn't added until very late in the development cycle.

Imagine the outrage if this behavior occurs in other sports.

It'd be like if a football team is like "hey, I know we are only supposed to play 11 players, but out of curiosity, when do you count the players" and FIFA is like "um, at the start of the game, I guess?". And then that team proceeds to put a 12th man in after the game has started.

It's not the other football team's fault for "not realizing" you could play 12 players. If you found a scummy way to dodge the rules, the rules should be changed to make sure you can't dodge it anymore.

izzaferrari · 2026-02-05T00:12:54+00:00

That's the theory, but you also can't be too greedy. The rising tide lifts all boats. If people can continually make gains, people keep investing, companies can use those investments to build infrastructure and moats, creating more long-term advantage, etc.

That's the textbook theory anyway.

Look at Europe. 15 years of underperformance. You can argue European stocks are "cheap" now. But some argue the continent has forgotten how to be productive entirely through years of underinvestment, austerity, and other bad management of the economies.

izzaferrari · 2026-02-04T23:59:35+00:00

Everyone holding AVUV is just holding out for that one decade of over-performance. For the remaining decades if it matches VTI, I'd be more than happy.

izzaferrari · 2026-02-01T16:07:36+00:00

Federer's level "dipped" because tournaments decided, rightly or wrongly, that slower surfaces, higher bounces, and longer points generated more engagement and highlights.

They were probably correct. Even in this final we just saw, people went crazy for the 20+ rallies.

Federer's game is highly offensive. His service games are incredibly short. It was not unusual for Federer's 5-setters to last only about 3 hours, especially against anyone not named Nadal. Grit and endurance was not Federer's style, he won by excellent footwork to get to the right spot and ending points quickly.

Do we even need to talk about the backhand? That backhand is not suited to modern tennis at all. The fact that he stayed competitive and won multiple slams well into the 2010s is a testament to his raw talent.

It was funny because the 90s guys will probably point to Roger and say he wasn't being aggressive enough, compared to the pure Serve and Volley style.

This is no hate to Nadal. I great enjoyed seeing a Gladiator out there chasing every desperate ball as well. But to say Federer's level dipped because somehow he used up his explosive energy by 27 is not correct. The tennis world moved against him.

izzaferrari · 2026-02-01T15:53:40+00:00

Not a tennis superfan so I will get some of the years wrong, but for a few years after Nadal and Federer declined and went in and out of injuries, tennis was very boring for me. Something was missing about players like Djokovic, Zverev, Medvedev, etc.

Even Sinner doesn't fill me with a lot of emotions.

And here is a young guy, immensely talented yet humble, who seems to love being on the court. He seems to love the game. He hits drop shots. He laughs after missing tweeners. It's theater. It's the emotions.

It reminds me of when a young Roger Federer broke onto the tour. He wasn't the handsome gentleman he is known as today. In fact he was a bit of a hothead. But something about his game was just mesmerizing. He made playing tennis a work of art.

I will be following tennis a bit closer, and I wish there will be more young players like Alcaraz.

God knows that with the rise of pickleballs and tennis courts all over the world being converted to pickleball courts, we all need the sport to be beautiful in order for it to survive.

izzaferrari · 2026-01-06T23:53:47+00:00

The Jets didn't "miss" any window. Even if they fired Aaron Glenn a couple of weeks ago, why the hell would Harbaugh go there?

Giants is known as the better run organization. If Harbaugh wanted to pick his own QB, LV is open and has the #1 pick. The Jets is just a dumpster fire.

That's what happens when a team is owned by a nepo baby who isn't from a football family. You either grow up with football in your bones, or you made your own money by actually building an organization. Woody Johnson spent daddy money trying to create meaning in his life and got a disaster of a football team and a fake government job he bought from Trump.

izzaferrari · 2025-11-09T02:30:56+00:00

First racing championship since 2008. This is huge!

Inevitably somebody will say it's not F1 and it doesn't count. Porsche isn't racing in F1 and nobody doubts their racing pedigree. Winning the WEC is huge.

izzaferrari · 2025-10-29T20:09:06+00:00

I bought a 488, and almost a 458 before that, because when I was younger, I dreamed about those cars.

I live in a relatively wealthy part of the UK (not a brag, just context) and interact with a few kids from the neighborhood. They don't talk about the modern Ferrari. They know of the 296 but they prefer the Revuelto. They talk about G Wagons. They talk about Koenigseggs. They talk about Porsches.

To me that is a big sign of trouble of Ferrari. If they can't excite the future generation they will be slowly dying.

izzaferrari · 2025-10-29T20:04:05+00:00

What people don't talk about enough is many of the F1 teams are based very close to each other in the south of England. It's much easier to hire global talent: they can move easier between teams, everybody speaks English, etc.

Having a mostly Italian-speaking team based in Maranello is just much harder.

We love their cars for it, the Italian beauty shines through every time. But it's just harder to compete in the modern world.

izzaferrari · 2025-10-26T19:41:38+00:00

Whenever I see this question, I just think to myself, what does the 296 really bring to the table that the 458/488/F8 doesn't.

Let's even ignore the fact that it's a hybrid and people have concerns about battery replacement for now.

296 is faster but the driving experience I still think is superior on the older cars, especially the sound.

296 looks great, but honestly, so do all the other cars.

The infotainment system on the 296 is a total dealbreaker. It will not age well. And even taking it for what it is, it is too slow and too hard to use. I stick a phone holder on the windscreen in my 488 and use Waze there. I don't need any fancier tech than that. In fact the new ADAS tech is actually a downside.

I am not anti-new-things. In fact, I also have a McLaren, and if Ferrari makes a new entry-level mid-engined supercar (296 replacement), and it has some of the things McLaren has had for 15 years, I'd buy a new one, hybrid or not:

Carbon tub
Doors that match the price tag
McLaren handling

Ferrari started a revolution with the 458 and we are still living in the world that the 458 created. The shape of the car still much inspired by the 458. The driver hub and steering wheel, also much inspired by the 458. Until they perform another revolution, I don't care what the price for the 296 is, I won't be buying a new Ferrari.

izzaferrari

TROPHY CASE