Ferrari can no longer rely on promises of future progress. That is the message emerging from Piero Ferrari, who has reminded the Maranello team that sporting projects are ultimately judged by results rather than words. After almost two decades without a Drivers’ title, the era of perpetual rebuilding must eventually give way to winning.
If even Piero Ferrari feels the need to remind his own team that facts, rather than talk, determine the value of a sporting project, it becomes difficult to dismiss the dissatisfaction surrounding Maranello as nothing more than frustration among supporters. This is not a journalist demanding a change of direction, an exasperated fan criticising unfulfilled promises or an outside observer calling for a revolution. It is Ferrari’s vice-chairman, the son of founder Enzo Ferrari and the owner of roughly 11% of the company’s ordinary shares. Because of his family connection, financial stake and above all his symbolic importance, his words carry very different weight from criticism coming from outside the organisation.
Interviewed by Leo Turrini for Quotidiano Sportivo, Piero Ferrari also discussed Ferrari’s 2026 season. His language was measured, but the substance was anything but insignificant. His comments have already placed renewed attention on what Ferrari must change after another uneven season.
“I quietly believe that our team needs facts, not talk. This year we have seen some good things and some less good things. We all have a duty to work towards achieving the objective that our fans, whom we must always thank for their patience, have now been waiting many years for. In the meantime, congratulations again to Kimi.”
The decisive part of that statement lies in the contrast between facts and talk. There is no need to exaggerate the meaning of Piero Ferrari’s words or attribute to him an explicit condemnation of the team that he did not make. Simply reading what he said is enough to understand the point: Ferrari still has to prove that it can live up to its ambitions and to the expectations of supporters whose patience has already been tested for many years. When such a reminder comes from within the Ferrari family itself, it cannot simply be dismissed as a question of outside perception.
Nineteen years of waiting and three regulation revolutions: Ferrari cannot keep starting again
Ferrari’s last Drivers’ World Championship came in 2007, when Kimi Räikkönen became world champion. The Constructors’ Championship followed in 2008, but Ferrari has not won either title since. The scale of that drought is difficult to reconcile with the history, resources and ambitions of the Prancing Horse. Kimi Räikkönen’s championship-winning period and complete record with the team can be explored through his Ferrari and Formula 1 career statistics.
During those years, Maranello has changed personnel, structures, technical directors and design philosophies. Ferrari has gone through transition seasons, organisational restructures and repeated promises of a return to the front. Every new phase has come with a request for the time required to build a winning organisation. Time, however, is not an unlimited resource, particularly when it is repeatedly used to explain why the expected result must once again be postponed.
The 2014 technical revolution, with the introduction of hybrid power units, left Ferrari struggling against Mercedes. The 2022 rules, which brought Formula 1 back to ground-effect cars, created another opportunity that Ferrari initially exploited before gradually losing momentum. Then came 2026, with a new generation of cars and a different balance between electrical energy and the internal-combustion engine. That was supposed to offer another opportunity to fight at the very top. Yet Maranello has again been unable to turn a major regulatory change into the kind of breakthrough required to re-establish itself as Formula 1’s leading force.
The repetition of that pattern is precisely what makes the situation increasingly difficult to justify. Nobody can reasonably demand that every technical revolution automatically produce a championship-winning Ferrari. The real question is why a team with elite resources, expertise and investment capacity continues to reach major regulatory turning points without capitalising on them as effectively as it should.
Building a structurally competitive model takes time and is essential. Permanent rebuilding, however, can eventually become a convenient form of self-justification: every season prepares for the next one, every mistake becomes experience and every disappointment is filed away in the name of a better future. But the future never really arrives if the present is continually treated as nothing more than another transitional phase.
That is why Piero Ferrari’s warning goes beyond the story of one season. The supporters, as Ferrari’s vice-chairman acknowledged, have been waiting for many years. It is an obvious observation, but also one that is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore: the patience of Ferrari’s fanbase cannot become the foundation on which the team builds its sporting strategy.
Ferrari’s 2027 season must become the real test
The 2027 championship will provide a fundamental test of Ferrari’s ability to correct its shortcomings. After completing an entire season under the new regulations, the team will have data, feedback and knowledge that simply were not available at the beginning of 2026. Mistakes will have to become practical lessons, weaknesses must be transformed into development priorities and information collected at the circuit will need to be reflected in the engineering decisions made at Maranello.
That process is already continuing through Ferrari’s late-season development programme. At the United States Grand Prix, the team used a split specification between its two cars to assess the latest SF-26 package against a known baseline, providing an important comparison for Ferrari’s final 2026 development work.
The ingredients required to build a competitive project are there. Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton form an exceptionally strong driver pairing, bringing different qualities and experience. Maranello’s workforce has established expertise, while the technical organisation can also draw on engineers recruited to strengthen the group. To all of that will be added the experience gained during the first full season under Formula 1’s new regulatory architecture.
None of those factors, of course, automatically guarantees a World Championship. Formula 1 is a competition in which Ferrari’s rivals are also investing, developing their cars and correcting their own mistakes. That is exactly why Ferrari must prove that it can turn its resources into performance rather than falling back on another request for patience.
The 2027 season cannot be treated as another year in which Ferrari simply observes progress, records its problems and postpones the final judgement for another twelve months. It must be the season in which everything learned during 2026 is tested properly on track. If Ferrari has identified the weaknesses of its car, if its technical organisation has found an effective direction and if the available expertise has been organised correctly, the results must begin to reflect the ambitions the team continues to declare.
If that does not happen, it will no longer be enough to point once again to the complexity of the regulations or the time required to consolidate the project. After 2014, 2022 and 2026, repeating the same explanations would risk sounding more like an admission of powerlessness than a convincing justification.
Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton cannot wait indefinitely
There is another reason why the wait is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain: Ferrari does not simply have to prove that it can be competitive. It has to prove that it can win. The distinction is fundamental. A podium, a pole position or an isolated victory can demonstrate the quality of a car under certain circumstances. A championship requires consistency, development strength, strategic clarity and an organisation capable of limiting mistakes when the pressure increases.
Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton cannot simply be treated as two resources accompanying Ferrari through an indefinite development process. They are drivers expected to compete for the biggest prizes in Formula 1, and Ferrari’s responsibility is to provide them with the machinery and organisation required to do so.
Charles Leclerc’s 2026 performances have repeatedly demonstrated the importance of extracting the maximum from the SF-26, with the latest Austin running again putting his speed at the centre of Ferrari’s weekend. The team’s recent progress can be followed through the latest analysis of Ferrari’s improving Austin competitiveness.
Lewis Hamilton, meanwhile, has been clear about the responsibility that comes with trying to improve Ferrari from within. The seven-time world champion has explained that part of his role is to question established conventions and challenge the organisation, an approach explored further in Lewis Hamilton’s comments about pushing Ferrari to evolve. That experience becomes even more valuable if Ferrari is serious about converting lessons from 2026 into a genuine championship challenge.
It is not a fan demanding results: it is Enzo Ferrari’s son
During the same interview, Piero Ferrari also discussed Kimi Antonelli and the possibility that the young Italian could one day drive a Ferrari.
“Many circumstances come into play here. There are contracts to respect and commitments that have already been made. Then, I’m not a hypocrite: who wouldn’t love to see an Italian behind the wheel of the car that carries my father’s name? And I suppose that, given his roots, the idea wouldn’t displease the boy from Bologna either. Maybe one day it will happen, why not?”
It was an opening accompanied by all the necessary caution regarding existing contracts and prior commitments, but it also revealed the attraction of potentially bringing together Formula 1’s most famous Italian team and one of the country’s emerging talents. Perhaps there is also a hint of regret that Mercedes was able to secure such a promising Italian driver before Ferrari. Yet the most urgent message for Maranello’s present lies elsewhere in Piero Ferrari’s interview.
“We need facts, not talk.”
It is not a declaration of war against the team, nor an explicit rejection of those working at Maranello. In some respects, it is more significant than either of those things: an acknowledgement that words alone are no longer enough to sustain the expectations of supporters who have been waiting almost two decades for another title.
Those words did not come from a commentator searching for a memorable phrase, nor from a supporter demanding that years of loyalty finally be rewarded. They came from Piero Ferrari, the son of Enzo Ferrari and vice-chairman of the company that carries his family name and draws an essential part of its identity from that historical legacy.
Ferrari cannot erase its past, but it must stop treating that past as credit that can indefinitely be spent on the future. Prestige does not score championship points. History cannot correct a flawed racing car. And the loyalty of Ferrari supporters cannot be regarded as an inexhaustible reserve of patience.
The 2027 season must be the year in which everything Ferrari has learned, designed and built is properly tested on the circuit. It will no longer be enough to promise that the direction is correct; Ferrari will have to prove it. It will no longer be enough to speak about potential; that potential must become performance. And it will no longer be enough to ask for more time, because Ferrari has already been given an extraordinary amount of it.
When even the company’s vice-chairman feels compelled to call for a shift from words to results, the substance of the message is unmistakable. What Maranello lacks is not another promise. It is a championship. And 2027 cannot become yet another season spent explaining why that championship still has not arrived.
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