Finnish former professional racing driver Mika Salo, who competed in Formula One between 1994 and 2002, remains a well-known name in the motorsport world. He took part in 111 Grand Prix weekends, but he is still very much involved in the sport and could be seen regularly in the paddock, as Mika Salo is currently part of the FIA stewards’ panel at various Formula 1 events.
In a recent interview for RacingNews365, Mika Salo, who made his Formula One debut back in 1994 for the Tyrrell team, shared his thoughts on Scuderia Ferrari’s disappointing 2022 F1 campaign, despite the strong performance of the F1-75 car.
Mika Salo also got the opportunity to drive six races for the Maranello team, in 1999, when he stood in for the injured Michael Schumacher, scoring two podium finishes. He even came close to taking a race win, at the Hockenheimring in Germany, but in the end he had to let through teammate and leader Eddie Irvine, who was fighting for the world championship. Eventually, Eddie Irvine was three points short of denying Mika Hakkinen the world title.
Scuderia Ferrari has been waiting for a new World Drivers’ title since 2007, when Kimi Raikkonen won the championship in a dramatic manner after a close duel with Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso. Since that moment, the Italian side were involved in the championship battle on a few occasions, but each time had to watch as competitors such as Mercedes and Red Bull kept taking the prizes. The start of the 2022 Formula 1 campaign was great for the Maranello team, with Charles Leclerc securing two race wins after the first three rounds, but once again everything was ruined due to a series of reliability issues and strategy errors, as Ferrari need a miracle to win the title in the second part of 2022.
“The Ferrari is certainly very fast, but something always goes wrong. I don’t know what it is,” Mika Salo said critically – “Sometimes the drivers make mistakes, sometimes the team again. You don’t win world titles in this way. When the season started, Ferrari were very strong and [Max] Verstappen and Red Bull had back luck and reliability problems. It looked like it was going to be an easy title for Ferrari and [Charles] Leclerc. But Red Bull had completely turned this around. Max is very, very strong.” – he added.
Ferrari also had a flying start in 2017 and 2018, but just like this year, things went wrong as a result of driver mistakes (from Sebastian Vettel), failing tactics and reliability issues. And 2022 unfortunately did not prove to be any different. Does this mean that Ferrari have structural problems in these areas?
“It’s hard to say what causes these problems, I’m too much of an outsider for that,” Mika Salo admitted – “But I do believe that something goes wrong every time. It’s a very difficult situation, but I am sure they will thoroughly investigate, analyse and solve this, because that’s how they just give away the title.” – he continued.
According to the former Ferrari driver, the pressure from the Italian media and the fans should not be a reason for the series of errors and disappointing outcomes. But at the same time, Mika Salo does not feel that a reorganisation is necessary and praised team principal Mattia Binotto, despite the Ferrari boss being highly criticized in the last few weeks:
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“There is certainly a lot of pressure on the team, but that applies to any team. The management is always under pressure to perform, and of course in Italy they have strong opinions and Ferrari has also changed the team management several times. I think Mattia did a really good job of bringing Ferrari back to the top. It is just small things they need to fix. They’re doing great on Saturdays, but on Sunday. It seems like the team meeting is already going wrong before the race, that they’re looking at how to lose a race instead of winning.” – he added.
After the summer break, the season will resume with the Belgian Grand Prix, followed by eight more races this season. Charles Leclerc will have the very difficult task of recovering 80 points to Max Verstappen, while Ferrari are almost 100 points behind Red Bull. Mika Salo admitted that the gap is too big at this stage and does not believe the Maranello team can win the titles in 2022:
“The way it is at Ferrari, I don’t think they deserve the title at all. It would be nice if they suddenly solved all [their] problems after the summer break, because we all want to see exciting races and an exciting title fight, and also with Mercedes there [so] they also fight for the victories.” – the former Ferrari driver concluded.
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