The Formula 1 season of 2025 was meant to be a fairytale of fresh beginnings, a thrilling chapter for the sport’s most storied—and most star-crossed—team. The arrival of seven-time World Champion Lewis Hamilton at Scuderia Ferrari was heralded as the moment the sleeping giant finally awoke, injecting the precision, discipline, and winning pedigree required to challenge for a title that has been elusive since 2008.

Instead, less than a year later, the dream has suffered a spectacular, catastrophic implosion.

The perfect, and perhaps morbid, analogy for Ferrari’s current state was offered not by a seasoned pundit, but by the disaster of the Titan submersible. If the ill-fated vessel, engineered with tragic shortcuts, represents the SF-25 chassis, then the wreck of the Titanic—the unrecoverable world championship—is the ultimate destination. And the man in the pilot seat, the one wielding the Logitech controller, is Ferrari Chairman John Elkann.

Elkann, the undisputed head of the legendary Maranello outfit, dropped a public bombshell this week that has shattered the illusion of unity and ignited a civil war within the team. His comments, made in the aftermath of a disappointing Brazilian Grand Prix, weren’t just critical; they were a surgical strike against the very core of the team’s human element—its drivers.

The Chairman’s Verdict: A Public Execution

Speaking with corporate candor that was shockingly blunt, Elkann praised the mechanics and engineers while laying the blame for the team’s stagnation squarely at the feet of the two men paid to drive: Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc.

“Brazil was a great disappointment,” Elkann stated. “If we look at the F1 championship, we can say that our mechanics are winning the title with their performance and everything they’ve done in the pit stops. If we look at our engineers, there’s no doubt the car has improved. But the rest is not at the required level. And certainly, we have drivers who need to focus on driving and talk less because we still have important races ahead of us.”

If the original statement left any room for misinterpretation, Elkann removed it days later, making the context of his frustration painfully clear: “We need drivers that think more about Ferrari and less about themselves.”

In corporate-speak, this translates to a devastating, simple message: “We’re not winning because our star drivers are selfish, distracted, and not good enough.”

The irony is not lost on anyone who follows the sport. The only figure who opened his mouth to cause a team-wide drama was Elkann himself. His critique, delivered from the very top of the organization, has managed to achieve the impossible: uniting the notoriously fractured Ferrari fanbase—the ardent ‘Team LH’ supporters and the loyal ‘Leclerc Simp Squad’—in shared hatred of their own supreme leader. The man tasked with steadying the ship has instead punched a hole beneath the waterline.

The Failed Revolution of Lewis Hamilton

The Chairman’s words, while seemingly aimed at both drivers for the sake of political balance, were widely interpreted as a direct blow to Lewis Hamilton. The seven-time champion’s arrival was supposed to be a cultural revolution, a transplant of the winning, ultra-professional DNA of Mercedes into the passionate but often chaotic organism of Ferrari.

Yet, once Hamilton stepped into the SF-25, the honeymoon period wore off quicker than the tread on a soft tyre. The season has been an unmitigated disaster for the Briton. Aside from a sprint win in China, Hamilton has failed to score a single Grand Prix podium. He has been systematically outclassed by his younger, more integrated teammate, Charles Leclerc, whose pace and consistency have left the veteran playing catch-up.

Hamilton’s on-track frustration has been visible, bubbling to the surface as early as the Miami Grand Prix. Off-track, he has reportedly been attempting to implement the “sweeping changes” he believes are necessary, changes that mirror the championship-winning operational philosophy he enjoyed at the Silver Arrows.

This is where Hamilton’s ambition collided with Maranello’s stubborn tradition. The problem, as brutally put by commentators, is that the Italians enjoy taking orders from the British about as much as anyone else on the planet.

A Familiar Ghost: The Vettel Pushback

This internal friction is not a new phenomenon at Ferrari; it is an organizational ghost that has haunted its halls for decades. We have seen this exact scenario play out before, most notably in 2015 when four-time champion Sebastian Vettel joined the Scuderia from the then-dominant Red Bull outfit.

Vettel, like Hamilton, arrived with an established winning methodology and a desire to enforce change. He endured similar institutional pushback and resistance to his suggestions. That failure to adapt to a champion’s input ultimately led to years of missed opportunities and Vettel’s own challenging exit.

Hamilton, though a proven veteran, is in an even more precarious situation than Vettel was a decade ago. At 40, he is closer to the end of his career and his last championship title is a distant memory. Critically, he is up against a teammate, Leclerc, who is not only dedicated but is the clear, long-term succession plan for the team. Leclerc’s performance—out-qualifying and out-racing Hamilton with greater frequency, even in a difficult car—has hurt Hamilton’s bargaining power as he tries to fundamentally transform the team. Who, after all, would the establishment listen to: the veteran who is underperforming or the long-standing junior who is delivering podiums (or at least better results) every week?

Elkann’s veiled criticism, urging drivers to “think more about Ferrari,” is a perfect managerial deflection. It shifts the narrative away from decades of organizational failure—the poor strategic calls, the lack of decisive leadership, and the resistance to external expertise—and places the spotlight on the individual dedication of two people who are literally risking their lives for the team.

The Bleak Outlook for 2026

The catastrophic implosion is not limited to the driver-management relationship; it extends to the very foundations of the team’s future competitiveness. While Ferrari PR attempts to backpedal and clarify Elkann’s comments as “constructive,” the damage is done.

The immediate crisis is compounded by terrifying reports regarding the 2026 engine regulations. With Renault euthanizing their engine supply ambitions, former staff members have been absorbed by rival teams, including Ferrari. These new employees have reportedly revealed that Ferrari’s 2026 power unit project is significantly behind schedule and already looking uncompetitive. According to whispers from Maranello, even the rival engines from the “glue factory” are looking more potent than what Ferrari has “cooked up.”

The irony here is truly agonizing: the teams that appear to have mastered the current regulations are McLaren and, devastatingly, Mercedes. Had Lewis Hamilton stayed put, chasing a record eighth title, he might have been in the best possible situation to achieve it. Instead, he chose a mission of self-harm, chasing the romantic dream of a final championship in red.

The truth revealed by Elkann’s tirade is that the budding, professional relationship between the Chairman and Hamilton has crashed quicker than anything in their wind tunnel. It sets up a brutally bleak, messy final year of their association, with a segment of the team counting down the days until the Briton can be shipped off.

Yet, amidst the chaos, Hamilton might just have a point. Ferrari’s core issue, the one that prevents them from capitalising on talent and technical gains, is their refusal to change. Elkann himself acknowledged the “great strides” made by the engineers in the pit stop championship—the one area where a radical, decisive change in personnel and approach was enforced by Team Principal Fred Vasseur. It makes Elkann’s stance even more baffling: in one sentence, he praises the reward of radical change, and in the next, he publicly crucifies the champion calling for the next, necessary structural overhaul.

This is the essence of Ferrari’s endless cycle of failure: they make the same mistakes for a decade and a half and then act surprised when the outcome is perpetually wrong. The fate of the Scuderia is now reduced to a grim set of options for 2027: either Ferrari ignores all advice, replaces Hamilton with a less challenging driver, and finds a predictable way to fail again, or they listen, enforce meaningful change, and then—because this is Ferrari—find a brand new, never-before-seen way to still screw things up.

The implosion is complete. The ship is sinking, and the man in charge is blaming the passengers for talking too loudly. The civil war has begun, and the world is watching to see who survives the wreck.