Our Ferrari team may be headed for another winless season, but Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton are in very good company.
Heading into the final four races of the Formula 1 season, Ferrari sit second in the 2025 Constructors’ Championship is quite a thing. For a team that has not won a Grand Prix this season to be where it is in the chase is a tribute to everything that is right at the Scuderia, except the car.
Forget McLaren for a second. Max Verstappen has won five races for that one-man show called Red Bull, and George Russell has won twice for Mercedes this season. Yet even without a win, and after both cars were disqualified in China, we head into the final four races sitting second and ahead of both those teams.
Never mind that Charles has only finished second twice, but both cars have only retired once, in Holland. But for Lewis twice missing out, both cars have been in the points in every other race. Of course, Charles somehow dragged that bucket of bolts onto pole in Hungary, and he has led from time to time. And Lewis kind of killed the no-win theory with pole and that marvellous Sprint win in China.
This winless car has been dismal
On the whole, however, the car has been dismal. But it still means the Tifosi actually have something to shout about. If Ferrari can maintain its second place in the Constructors’ Championship and still not win a race, that would be a record and a pretty extraordinary achievement against teams that have won multiple times, one of which is still in play for the Drivers’ title.
Of course, not winning races in a season is nothing new for Ferrari. Starting with the first season of Formula 1 in 1950, when, against what most people believe, Maranello missed the first race at Silverstone. It took the team over a year to see the chequered flag first when González took his V12 375 to victory in Belgium in ’51. It went well from there. Ascari dominated to take Ferrari’s first titles in 1952 and again in ’53.
Two wins followed in ’54 and one in ’55 before Fangio brought a third title for Ferrari’s Lancias in 1956. But a dot season followed with the same cars the next year. Sporadic wins came through to 1960 as Enzo stuck to his front-engine guns. Ferrari then dominated to its first Constructors’ crown after switching to rear-engine cars in ’61. But the win-and-bust curse struck again with a fourth winless season in 1962.
Going winless is nothing new for Ferrari
Surtees won once in ’63 before leading Ferrari to its second Constructors’ title in ’64, and, you guessed it, the lads failed to win again in 1965 and again in ’67. From there, however, the Scuderia won races every year until 1973, when it suffered its sixth winless season.
A golden era then followed as Ferrari took five of the seven Constructors’ and four Drivers’ titles through to 1979. After that, the curse returned. Not even Scheckter and Villeneuve could prevent Ferrari’s seventh winless Formula 1 season in 30 years, finishing eighth in the championship in 1980. Villeneuve won twice in ’81 as Ferrari won regularly enough through the early turbo era to secure double Constructors’ titles in ’82 and ’83.
Then came the eighth winless season in ’86, followed by that desperate era when not even Prost, Berger, or Alesi could drag a Ferrari to victory for three years from 1991 to ’93. That took Maranello’s winless season tally to eleven before Berger and Alesi prevented a five-year drought with a single win each in 1994 and ’95.
A great team with a crap car, again
It was all change from there as the second Michael Schumacher golden era kicked off. Ferrari won multiple races every year, along with seven Constructors’ titles, all the way from 1996 to 2014, when not even Alonso or Räikkönen could carry the first hybrid-era Ferrari to a win in a season, marking the twelfth winless year in 65.
Two years later, Räikkönen and Vettel once again failed to win for an unlucky thirteenth time in 2016, somehow still scraping third in that year’s Constructors’ chase. More recently, Vettel and Leclerc in lockdown 2021, and then Leclerc and Sainz, made it fifteen winless Ferrari seasons, albeit finishing third in the chase in ’22.
So, can Leclerc and Hamilton make it sixteen seasons in which Ferrari has not won a race in its 75 years in Formula 1? Either way, they’ll be in some very good company. And who knows, perhaps even end the year a record second in the Constructors’ Championship while at it — which would be a major credit to a great team blighted by a crap car.
