Imola disaster: Ferrari torn apart by Italian media after qualifying performance. Ferrari faces harsh criticism in the Italian press after a disastrous qualifying at Imola.

The newspaper headlines
Entering history through the wrong door. It already happened to Ferrari in China with a double disqualification for different reasons (excessive floor wear for Hamilton, while Leclerc’s SF-25 was underweight), and the encore came at Imola in Qualifying in front of the home fans at the circuit named after the founder. Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton will start today from the sixth row; in 2005, at least Rubens Barrichello made it into the top 10, finishing ninth. Yesterday the Ferraris missed Q3, beaten by seven different cars. Only customer teams Sauber and Haas did worse.

“We just have to apologize,” said Charles Leclerc. The headlines of the main Italian newspapers are anything but kind to Ferrari. “Red abyss” reads Il Corriere della Sera, where Giorgio Terruzzi writes in his editorial: “Ferrari’s value is shown by the stopwatches, the rankings. The data is mortifying. Then there are the words before and after each performance. By now a tragicomic sequence of reasoning, good only for creating illusions, for hinting at vague upcoming progress, for treating short, irrelevant stints in the midfield as signs of some mysterious element that tomorrow, or the day after at the latest, will make us happy.”

A red cry is the title of Il Resto del Carlino: “The worst Ferrari ever, certainly at Imola, but I fear also in general – begins Leo Turrini – A Red Apocalypse.” Unacceptable blasts La Stampa: “Imola silently lowers the red flags: half an hour after the end of qualifying, not one is left in sight,” notes Jacopo d’Orsi. The worst Ferrari, Charles Leclerc red with embarrassment is the title in Repubblica: “The others improve, the SF-25 falls into a vertical decline. Double failure in Imola qualifying, in front of a stunned home crowd: the Monegasque 11th, Lewis Hamilton 12th. It had never happened before that the Scuderia was outside the top 10 at the Santerno. Where overtaking is impossible. A sixth row that looks like the back benches of a classroom: the ones with the grimaces,” writes Alessandra Retico.