Ferrari has just come out of yet another difficult Formula 1 weekend. What exactly is missing for the team from Maranello to return to the top? Alessandro Benetton may have a suggestion.
It was another bitter weekend for Ferrari, which, after the Singapore Grand Prix, saw its hopes of securing second place in the Constructors’ Championship fade even further. On the Marina Bay circuit — where, at least on paper, the Maranello-based team was expected to perform better than Mercedes — Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton were forced to deal with significant brake issues. Throughout the eighteenth round of the 2025 Formula 1 World Championship, both Ferrari drivers were repeatedly instructed to perform lift and coast to preserve the car’s braking system.
The past as a guide for the future
During the most recent episode of Race Anatomy on Sky Sport F1, Alessandro Benetton, president of the holding company “Edizione,” shared his views on Ferrari’s 2025 Formula 1 season. The Italian entrepreneur reflected on the team’s current struggles and offered some thought-provoking insight. “There are moments when you simply can’t achieve the necessary discontinuity that allows progress and improvement,” he said. “As the Orientals say, when a plant stops growing, it dies. The same thing happens in companies and projects — at some point, the desire to push further fades away, and that becomes very difficult to manage. Because there is always someone emerging who can make the difference, just as, in some way, we at Benetton Formula once did.”
Although Alessandro Benetton has been distant from the world of Formula 1 for several years, he still tried to point Ferrari toward a path forward, drawing inspiration from the team’s glorious past. “I think good manners suggest that one should not look into others’ plates,” he noted, “so I don’t want to make assumptions, especially since I haven’t been directly involved in that world in recent years. What I can say is that Ferrari returned to winning largely thanks to Michael Schumacher. He wasn’t just an extraordinary driver — he was someone who carried with him a special energy and had the ability to infect others with it. That energy was made of determination, precision, and the will to dedicate himself entirely to the cause. It became contagious for the entire team, which, let’s not forget, had been struggling.”
The advice
The president of “Edizione” went on to add: “I believe that companies, in times of transition, must be able to identify those kinds of leaders — people capable of making a difference through their contagious energy. I don’t have a specific name in mind for Ferrari, but I’m sure of one thing: successful teams almost always start from an exceptional individual and then build the whole structure around that person, rather than relying only on standard organizational planning.”
Alessandro Benetton’s words resonate as a reminder that Ferrari’s way back to the top may not lie solely in technical upgrades or strategic overhauls, but in rediscovering the human element — the kind of leadership, passion, and determination that once turned Maranello into a dominant force in Formula 1. Whether such a figure can emerge again within the current generation remains to be seen, but one thing is certain: without that spark, Ferrari’s revival will remain out of reach.
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