Ferrari’s Le Mans success cannot mask their ongoing F1 struggles

A week on from a hard-fought victory at the Le Mans 24 Hours, Ferrari will have taken heart from a reminder that they can compete with and beat the best. Yet at this weekend’s Canadian Grand Prix, in the discipline that matters most to the Scuderia, the best they can hope for it appears is just coming to a better understanding of their car. While Red Bull march away with the Formula One championship, Ferrari are increasingly exasperated and baffled.

The win at Le Mans last weekend was a demonstration of a successful, quick car, driven and operationally managed with great skill in challenging and changeable conditions at the vingt-quatre.

The import was not lost on anyone at Ferrari. The group’s chair, John Elkann, was at Le Mans, as was the team principal, Fred Vasseur, and their lead driver, Charles Leclerc. All were overjoyed at the result, Ferrari’s first overall win at Le Mans since 1965. Nor can the irony be missed in that the team re-entered the top class of endurance racing for the first time in 50 years partly because they needed to reallocate staff and resources away from F1 in order to meet the budget cap.

On the grid at Le Mans the mechanics were smiling, taking selfies with the huge crowd, their joie de vivre in contrast to the almost tangible air of heavy expectation and intense pressure that surrounds the F1 team now entering its 15th season without a title. It equals the longest winless streak the team have endured, a wearying weight to carry.

Having started last year so strongly but then falling away to Red Bull, this season they have failed to even hit the ground running. Fourth in the constructors’ championship behind Red Bull, Mercedes and Aston Martin, optimism for the new season has long been