“Ferrari can't afford to say 'next year' for 15 years”: Former F1 team principal criticises the Maranello team after their poor start to the campaign

Former F1 team princial Flavio Briatore recently criticized Ferrari after a series of disappointing performances from the team. The Italian stated that the Scuderria must work harder as a team to return to their winning ways.

After being one of the two championship contenders at the beginning of the 2022 season, Ferrari were thought to be on the comeback this year. Unfortunately, quite the opposite has happened right from the very first race of the season.

Charles Leclerc has gotten off to a bad start this year, with two retirements in the first three races and a crash during qualifying in Miami, making it very hard for him to score points. Briatore, who was the Race Principal at Benetton and Renault in the past, criticised Leclerc's attacking pace in Miami in contrast to his teammate's defence. He told Il Riformista,

"Ferrari is far behind, the car has countless problems, starting with consumption and Charles Leclerc, as we also saw in Miami, is not competitive, unlike his teammate Carlos Sainz who defended himself well."

Leclerc's performance in Miami was believed to be a product of the weak race pace of the SF-23, the same view that the Monegasque shared. Briatore, however, wasn't impressed. The Italian stated that while Frederic Vasseuer, Ferrari's new Team Principal, was doing his best, only a team effort would lead to immediate success.

"Ferrari cannot afford to say 'next year' for 15 years, it doesn't stand. Frederic Vasseur is just one man in a team. He is trying to rebuild an adequate technical structure and at the same time not to lose engineers."

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Charles Leclerc dependent on Ferrari's latest upgrades after Miami performance

It is expected that the Prancing Horse will bring its first major car upgrades to the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix in Imola, set for May 19-21. After the disappointing team performance at the Miami GP, Leclerc was asked about the importance of the upcoming upgrades. F1 quoted him saying:

"Well, it’s going to be very important because now we are very far away – like very, very far away. And for me, I really struggled to find any explanations why we are so far in the race and so close in qualifying. This is really something we need to work on."

The Italian outfit were the second fastest during the Azerbaijan Grand Prix earlier, but could not replicate that performance in Miami. Leclerc was stuck behind the Haas of Kevin Magnussen for a long time during the race, and although the track has been known for being hard to overtake, Verstappen was able to go from P9 to winning the race. A lot of development still awaits in the Maranello garage.