Formula 1 is preparing to shine the spotlight on the 2026 World Championship. January will be an intense month as the sport moves closer to one of the most demanding and highly anticipated regulation changes in its history. From power units to chassis design, through aerodynamics and sustainable fuels, the cars that will take to the track from March will be completely redesigned. There is widespread excitement across the paddock, because every new technical cycle brings uncertainty, and no one can say with confidence which team will emerge as the benchmark.
For Ferrari supporters, however, the hope is more specific: that the Scuderia can recover from one of the bleakest seasons in its long history, a year marked by a lack of podium finishes and entirely devoid of victories. According to team principal Fred Vasseur himself, Ferrari’s engineers have been fully focused on the 2026 project since April 2025. That decision inevitably increases expectations around a team that has not won a world championship since 2008 and which, as Carlo Vanzini has pointed out, now appears to be built on shaky foundations.
Speaking in a video published on his YouTube channel, Carlo Vanzini offered a brutally honest assessment of Ferrari’s recent past. “While Mercedes and Red Bull were fighting for the title, Ferrari had two full years to build a car that was supposed to dominate the ground-effect era. They only managed to do it in the first part of 2022, when they gave Charles Leclerc a car that he was driving like a world champion,” the Italian journalist said.
Carlo Vanzini did not stop there, continuing his criticism of the technical direction taken by the team. “They failed because of the working group and because of the wide-sidepod philosophy that they defended so stubbornly. Then there was TD39, the one concerning the floor, but that cannot be used as an excuse. Ferrari effectively did not take part in the Formula 1 world championships for two years, and it is astonishing that no heads rolled,” he stated.
According to Carlo Vanzini, the roots of Ferrari’s current struggles were planted precisely in that period. “That is where the ashes were created. When you have a two-year advantage and you still cannot build a dominant car, it means that something is fundamentally not working,” he concluded.
With the 2026 regulations now firmly on the horizon, Ferrari finds itself at a crossroads. The Maranello team has chosen to sacrifice short-term results in order to focus everything on the new technical cycle, but the weight of past mistakes remains heavy. As Formula 1 enters a new era defined by radical changes and fresh opportunities, the pressure on Ferrari to finally deliver a competitive and well-conceived project has never been greater.
As the 2026 revolution looms, Carlo Vanzini’s words echo the frustration of a fanbase that has watched Maranello struggle to capitalize on technical resets. The “ashes” of the previous era must now be swept aside if Fred Vasseur’s team hopes to turn the 2026 project into more than just another season of transition. With the entire grid starting from zero, Ferrari has the opportunity to prove Carlo Vanzini wrong, but doing so will require a level of operational excellence and technical boldness that has been sorely missing from the Scuderia’s recent campaigns.
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