The quiet, desperate words crackled over the radio, laced with a potent mix of irony and crushing resignation: “Enjoy the P8.”

That phrase, uttered by a frustrated Charles Leclerc after the fateful Azerbaijan Grand Prix, was more than just a momentary outburst. It was the shot heard around the Formula 1 world, the visible tremor of an earthquake that has been brewing in the hallowed halls of Maranello. The incident at Baku—a seemingly simple case of ambiguous team orders that favored Lewis Hamilton over the Monegasque driver—was not an accident, but the turning point. It was the single, devastating drop that overflowed a glass already filled to the brim, triggering an internal war that now threatens to drag Ferrari’s most ambitious and expensive project into “absolute chaos.”

The high-stakes gamble taken by Ferrari’s management was clear: unite Charles Leclerc, the emotional heir and beloved symbol of the Scuderia, with Lewis Hamilton, the living legend and seven-time World Champion, who arrived with a messianic aura and his own agenda. On paper, it was the perfect union—a pairing of generational speed, title-winning experience, and raw, unadulterated hunger. In reality, it has become a “watchmaking bomb.” That bomb has now exploded, and sources within Maranello suggest that nobody currently possesses the tools to disable the resulting fallout.

The War of the Two Thrones: A Betrayal in Baku

The core of the conflict is a fundamental lack of clarity in hierarchy and vision. When Leclerc, who had demonstrably better pace and potential to recover positions, received the instruction not to attack Hamilton, his frustration was the “drowned cry of someone who feels that his house is no longer his.” He felt betrayed, deprioritized, and cast aside in favor of the newcomer. For a driver who has weathered years of strategic blunders and mechanical failures for the team he considers family, this wasn’t just a bad race call; it was an existential crisis.

The radio silence following the incident was equally deafening. Leclerc’s sarcastic remark was a raw expression of hurt. Meanwhile, Lewis Hamilton’s measured, post-race silence was not a diplomatic maneuver, but a deliberate “marking of territory.” It was a non-verbal assertion: “I don’t deviate from the plan; the other person has to adapt.” Hamilton, accustomed to being the absolute epicenter and undisputed number one at McLaren and Mercedes, is not used to sharing the limelight. He is facing a younger, equally prideful opponent who is not ready to easily cede the ground he spent years earning.

This internal division is now manifesting across the entire team structure. Ferrari’s alignment, costing over €70 million a year, is crumbling after only a handful of events. Internal sources describe the atmosphere in Maranello as “toxic, tense, on the verge of implosion.” The decision-making process is no longer about maximizing performance; it is a full-blown “war of power between the two sides”—that of Leclerc, representing the tradizione and the emotional commitment to the team, and that of Hamilton, embodying the rivoluzione and the ruthless efficiency of a global champion. Shockingly, the conflict has become so unbearable that key engineers have already requested departmental changes, unable to operate within this corrosive environment. The dream of dominating the sport is being “devoured by an internal conflict” that not even the faint glimmers of on-track results can conceal.

The risk is enormous: if Leclerc begins to distrust the equipment and feels systematically betrayed, Ferrari risks losing not only the vital cohesion between its star drivers but also the emotional commitment of its most loyal and most promising talent. The internal fracture threatens the stability of the entire organization, proving that the most advanced technical setup in the world cannot compensate for a broken team dynamic. The historical weight of the Scuderia only amplifies the pressure, turning every tactical error into a media catastrophe. The institution is paralyzed, caught between honoring its past and securing its future, and the Hamilton-Leclerc dynamic has become the flashpoint for all these decades of unresolved tension.

The Treacherous Weapon: Dissecting the SF-25’s Fatal Flaws

The internal combustion has been fueled by the team’s other great failure: the SF-25 car itself. Conceived as Ferrari’s “final weapon” to reclaim the top tier of world motorsport, the SF-25 is proving to be a “treacherous machine.” It is a car that promised aerodynamic efficiency, hybrid power superiority, and a stable platform, but has instead delivered a double-edged creature of immense inconsistency. This inconsistency is what truly highlights the depth of the organizational crisis, showing that the high-profile driver feud is not an isolated problem, but a symptom of a structurally flawed project.

While the car demonstrates genuine competitive virtues in high-speed areas like long straights and fast corners—ideal for tracks like Spa or Silverstone—its performance outside of these specific contexts is alarming. The SF-25 loses balance in an unpredictable way, particularly in slow corners and lateral load transitions.

The primary technical headache lies in its rear-axle traction. The car simply does not generate enough grip when accelerating out of low-speed turns, creating a disastrous combination of understeer on entry and oversteer on exit. This makes a consistent race rhythm virtually impossible. At a circuit like Baku, defined by its 90-degree corners leading onto long straights, the car became a “nightmare.” It struggled to maintain the temperature of the rear tires, leading to excessive sensitivity to ‘graining’—a common issue that the team failed to contain despite strategic juggling. This technical fragility means the car is unable to exploit the talents of its two superstar drivers, forcing them into frustrating compromises that only exacerbate the emotional tension. The promised aerodynamic revolution has become a technical cage.

The car’s sensitivity extends to its setup. Engineers have reported that every minor adjustment produces unexpected side effects. An attempt to improve braking or mid-corner stability often compromises performance elsewhere, trapping the team in a constant, paralyzing cycle of trial-and-error. The drivers are left without confidence, with Hamilton openly stating he “still fails to find a reference point in [the] SF-25.” As the transcript starkly puts it: “the car does not convey what it does and when that happens the pilot goes blind.” This lack of tactile feedback is a profound engineering failure that undermines the very foundation of performance driving.

The technical crisis climaxed in Baku’s unpredictable conditions. The SF-25’s tire operational window was so narrow that any variation in temperature instantly shattered the car’s precarious balance. Ferrari was forced to keep its drivers on track longer than was prudent, waiting for a window that never opened, and by the time the tires were changed, the damage was irreversible. The SF-25 has devolved from a precision tool into an “unpredictable instrument,” one that demands near-perfect conditions to perform—a fatal recipe for failure in the highly variable world of modern Formula 1. The team has world-class human talent and a history demanding excellence, but the car is burying it all under a mountain of frustration and broken promises.

The External Firestorm and the Fork in the Road

The conflict, internal and technical, has inevitably scaled to the media plane. In Formula 1, when a crisis breaches the walls of the factory, there is no turning back. Statements become weapons, headlines serve as entrenchments, and every word from a relevant figure acts as an accelerator on the fire.

World Champion Jacques Villeneuve, renowned for his unfiltered commentary, delivered the statement that truly resonated with the Italian and global press: “Honestly Ferrari is completely lost at this time and needs guidance.” For Villeneuve, what is happening at Ferrari is not a simple sporting downturn, but an institutional crisis. It is a sign that the team lacks the clear direction necessary to integrate two dominant personalities like Hamilton and Leclerc, and the SF-25 is merely the most visible symptom of a much deeper problem.

The Italian media, already documenting the deep concern over the lack of direction, immediately replicated Villeneuve’s condemnation, intensifying the narrative war. The fans are divided, the rivals are “rubbing their hands,” and Ferrari is once again proving to be its own most formidable enemy. The entire project’s ambition has backfired, turning what was supposed to be a unifying triumph into a destructive internal power struggle, laid bare for the world to scrutinize.

This moment is perhaps the most critical for the Scuderia. The crisis is a structural failure that threatens to drag the entire organization toward another “year of bitter disappointment.” The pairing of the champion and the heir, intended as a master play, is imploding.

Ferrari stands at a precipice, forced to confront a brutal choice: Will it be the team that continues to “live from the past, repeating errors over and over again,” or will it finally find the internal strength to “control its destiny, accept its failures, and reinvent itself from the inside?”

The ability to maintain harmony when results are poor is where championship dynasties are forged. In Maranello, the balance is gone. The toxic fallout from Baku proves that the most expensive, most polarizing project in the team’s history is collapsing under the weight of its own internal contradictions. The question is no longer if the project can dominate, but whether it can survive. The time to fix the car and mend the human trust is rapidly running out. The chaos is total.