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Bungled strategy, reliability issues and driver errors put paid to Ferrari’s chances last season – new boss Frederic Vasseur is cautiously optimistic he can help it win in 2023

Remember the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix? The infamous ‘crashgate’ race. It took a year for the full story to come out, about how Nelson Piquet Jr’s crash shortly after Fernando Alonso’s pit stop was deliberate and part of a team plan. Aside from the scandal element, the most significant part of that story was how it had robbed Ferrari’s Felipe Massa of a likely victory (and in hindsight the world championship). His short-notice pit stop in response to the Piquet-triggered safety car had him leaving the pits with the fuel hose still attached.

Stefano Domenicali was the Ferrari boss back then and after the race was in a resigned state of mind. He’d worked hard, since assuming the role from his former boss Jean Todt, at maintaining the team’s focus and discipline and it had remained a super-strong team, with fast pit stops, good strategy calls and a fast car. But there was something in the culture, he reflected in Singapore, that brought emotion to the fore in moments of stress and he seemed at a loss to know how to address it. “I think it’s just part of our identity. That passion is an asset most of the time. It drives us forward and we get strength from it. But I think you see today the downside in these sort of moments. Felipe had driven his magnificent lap to be on pole, he led the race and was looking quite comfortable there and suddenly in a split second the situation is upside down and random and you have to react and we didn’t react well.”