Mario Andretti shares his thoughts on highs and lows of Ferrari's 2022 F1 season

Former Scuderia Ferrari Mario Andretti, who won the 1978 Formula 1 world championship with Lotus, shared his thoughts on the highs and lows of Scuderia Ferrari’s 2022 F1 season, pointing out that several strategic mistakes made by the Maranello team’s pitwall led to an easy road for Max Verstappen, as he secured his second F1 title.

The Italian side started the season with the best car on the grid and Charles Leclerc won the Bahrain Grand Prix, as well as the Australian Grand Prix, which was round 3 of the championship. It looked as the Maranello team would be able to challenge Red Bull for both titles, but several poor strategy decisions, alongside some power unit reliability issues helped Max Verstappen build a solid lead in the Drivers’ Championship, despite the strong pace of the F1-75 in the first part of the season.

Ahead of the Singapore Grand Prix, Max Verstappen has a 116-point lead over the Monegasque driver in the overall standings and could win the title as early as next weekend, if results go his way.

While Red Bull now have the fastest car on the grid, Scuderia Ferrari was not able to capitalize on several opportunities in the first half of the championship, according to former Ferrari driver Mario Andretti.

In a recent interview for PlanetF1, the Italian-born American former racing driver admitted that he has been pleased to see Ferrari being able to fight back at the top of Formula 1, but at the same time has rued some mistakes made by the Maranello team, which missed out on at least three race wins due to questionable strategy calls or errors in operational procedures:

“[Max] has proven again, how worthy he is of the World Championship. A lot of it is thanks to Ferrari in so many ways – Ferrari have been so competitive, and they handed to him on a plate. He still would be in control, in my opinion, but it was really handed to him. It’s always great to see Ferrari come back and be able to fight but they’ve made so many strategic mistakes on tyres and so forth – it’s unbelievable.” – Mario Andretti pointed out.

Despite the fact that Ferrari’s F1-75 has lost some race pace in recent weeks, an issue that the Italian side has to investigate and fix for 2023, Ferrari did have a car capable of challenging the Red Bull RB18 for the first half the season.

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Charles Leclerc won three races this year, while Carlos Sainz secured his maiden Formula 1 victory at the Silverstone circuit, as Mario Andretti explained that the main factors for outright victory are present – now it’s all about how the races are executed and how Ferrari is able to put everything together and avoid other mistakes:

“Ferrari certainly have the drivers and the car. Both Charles and Carlos are capable of winning and the car has been consistently competitive- they’ve shown they have the pace in qualifying, the race pace, but Max and Red Bull have just been going on their merry way. Red Bull have done a phenomenal job, no question, and right now it looks like Max will be World Champion with several races left in the season. There were clear mistakes made on Ferrari’s strategies. They’ve had a couple of mechanical situations, which is unfortunate – that can happen to anyone.” – the former Ferrari driver added.

“Just that, sometimes, their choice of tyres has been really, really weird. With a car that’s so competitive, they don’t have to have a strategy that’s different from everyone else. Just try to go with the same with what the others are going and you’re going to be in good shape because they can hold their own. It seem like they just threw away a lot of opportunities, in my opinion. Even Charles expressed himself several times how disappointed he was. I don’t know how the situation works within the team, whether the drivers can have some more voice in their choices. I don’t know how that works. But whoever is dictating the strategy is not doing a very good job.” – Mario Andretti concluded.