Elkann's criticism highlights an age-old Ferrari F1 problem

Ferrari chairman John Elkann’s rebuke of his Formula 1 drivers, saying Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton should “talk less”, has landed like a thunderclap in Maranello.

Elkann told reporters on Monday that the Scuderia’s engineering team had done a good job improving this year’s car, but that, “if we look at the rest, it is not up to scratch”.

“And we definitely have drivers who need to focus on driving and talk less, because we still have important races ahead of us and getting second place is not impossible,” he added.

To add insult to injury, he went on to point out that Ferrari being “united” was behind its success in the World Endurance Championship, where the Italian squad secured the title over the weekend.

“In Bahrain we won the WEC title. When Ferrari is united, we get the results,” he said after Ferrari celebrated its WEC success in Bahrain while enduring one of its worst weekends of the Formula 1 season in Brazil.

From Enzo Ferrari himself to Luca di Montezemolo, the Scuderia’s leaders have often chosen the public stage to issue private reprimands.

In doing so, they’ve sometimes reminded the world who’s in charge, and just as often, reminded everyone why Ferrari can never quite escape its own turmoil during rough periods like the current one.

It’s not hard to feel that Elkann’s frustrations are justified.

After a strong run of form late in the 2024 season, Ferrari had set its goals on this year’s titles.

With a strong leader in Fred Vasseur, one of the best drivers in Charles Leclerc, and a dream partnership with the arrival of Lewis Hamilton, all the ingredients were in place to finally return to championship-winning ways.

A slow start to the season ensued, but the team always insisted it just wasn’t unlocking the full potential this year’s car had, and that it was a matter of time before it would unleash it.

Instead, Ferrari has now gone over a year without an F1 win, Leclerc is a distant fifth in the standings, and Hamilton’s dream partnership has turned into a nightmare of colossal proportions, the seven-time champion yet to finish on the podium after 21 grand prix weekends with the Scuderia.

Elkann’s comments came in the wake of another disastrous weekend in Brazil, where Ferrari’s season slipped further into disappointment after Leclerc was taken out and Hamilton retired his car after damaging it at the start of the race.

The Interlagos weekend was, in many ways, a microcosm of Ferrari’s season.

In such a context, Elkann’s irritation is perfectly understandable. However, his comments reveal deeper cracks in the Scuderia’s culture of blame.

Publicly, both drivers have expressed their frustrations over the course of the season, and particularly Leclerc has not been shy in being critical about the lack of progress or about missed opportunities.

To a similar extent, Hamilton too has voiced his frustration, but the Briton’s own struggles to perform at the expected level have somewhat softened the impact of his criticism of the team.

Hamilton is still trying to find his old form, but Leclerc has been flattering his car for most of the year and has always expressed his long-term commitment to the Scuderia despite years of failing to give him a car to secure what many feel is a deserved title.

For a chairman expecting order and unity, his drivers’ discontent may sound dangerously close to dissent, particularly when that discontent is publicly expressed throughout an entire season.

But telling drivers to “talk less” risks not only missing the point but creating more turmoil by upsetting the team’s leadership and the drivers themselves.

While Hamilton’s season has been far from what he expected from a personal point of view, Leclerc at least has earned the right to complain about missed opportunities and to air his frustrations.

Doing it publicly might not be the best option, but both Leclerc and Hamilton are vocal, not out of arrogance, but because they are desperate for progress.

Leclerc has been the face of Ferrari’s modern era – fast and loyal. Now in his seventh season with Ferrari, Leclerc has been through four technical restructurings and two team principals.

His comments are not misplaced, and they reflect years of frustration that no amount of silence could have fixed.

For his part, Hamilton arrived in Maranello with seven titles and the experience of helping make the Mercedes team almost invincible at the start of the hybrid regulations.

Hamilton has even written reports from his championship-winning experience to Ferrari’s relevant departments in an attempt to help the Scuderia make progress.

After Elkann’s comments made the headlines, the Briton took to his social media channels to say, “I back my team. I back myself. I will not give up. Not now, not then, not ever.”

Elkann’s remarks are not only ironic in that they are an example of the public criticism he himself called for less of, but also risk being counterproductive.

His patience, it seems, has reached its limit, but history suggests that when Ferrari’s top man feels compelled to speak, the problem usually runs deeper than driver chatter.

It’s almost a reflex at Maranello. When things go wrong, the instinct is to point downwards, not inwards.

Even Enzo Ferrari himself did it with legendary coldness, publicly blaming drivers for mechanical failures.