Comparisons between Ferrari and Manchester United are frequent, not least because of a common colour and a tendency to dominate or be in the spotlight for controversial reasons. Ferrari's failure to score a single point in the first three races is the equivalent of United languishing at the bottom of the Premier League in November. There have been no calls for the director, Stefano Domenicali, to resign because motor racing does not work that way but Sir Alex Ferguson would surely empathise with the team principal as Ferrari experience their worst start in 28 years of formula one racing.
The cause of Ferrari's embarrassment is a car that does not work. The precise reason is as difficult to establish as a cure, although the technical team were wrong-footed by their interpretation of the rule changes, particularly the diffuser at the rear of the car. Ferrari continue to seethe over an appeal court decision rubber stamping the contentious diffusers used by Williams, Toyota and, particularly Brawn,the latter's domination of the championship being the more irritating for the presence of Ross Brawn, the technical and organisational genius who brought several years of success to Ferrari.
Brawn's absence from the Italian team, along with Michael Schumacher's driving force, is the most public aspect of a gradual exodus that appears to have debilitated the former champions. It has prompted Niki Lauda, world champion with Ferrari in 1975 and 1977, to suggest there has been a return to the "spaghetti culture" for which Ferrari became notorious during the chaotic days of the 1970s and 1980s. "I take it very personally when people suggest that because we are Italians we cannot get things to work properly," Domenicali, however, retorted. "We have won titles and races in the past with fundamentally the same team."
The question of national traits has nothing to do with the diffuser affair making a bad car worse and accelerating a programme of redevelopment as the teams begin the European sector of the season in Barcelona in two weeks. By then a heavily revised Ferrari will be available for Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen, a sure sign that the winners of 15 drivers' championships have not given up on claiming another this year. Even though the chances must be close to zero, Domenicali dismisses talk of forgetting about the remaining 14 races.
"Focus on next year? No way!" Domenicali told BBC Radio 5 Live. "We can never give up. What I can say is that the season has started badly but this is what we've got. We have to work as hard as possible to make sure we are competitive again. I don't know if that's because of pride or the heritage of the team. It is the nature of our business. We cannot say let's have one year cruising around the world and working at home for next year."
One of Domenicali's many roles is the maintenance of morale within a team fuelled by emotion. The passion for racing exploded in Brazil at the end of last year when a mechanic, realising Massa had lost the championship to Lewis Hamilton, head-butted a glass screen in the Ferrari garage.
"When things are going well," Domenicali said, "you have a very positive emotion and, above all, now when we have had a bad start, it is very important to control the emotion because the pressure is very high. We need to make sure that people are working flat out, but in a rational way. This is the reason why I have to protect them and keep all the emotion on my shoulder. It's difficult, no doubt. But it's not a question of how many years we have not scored a point in the first three races. The point is that there are reasons and we have to identify the reasons and solve them immediately. That's the only thing we can do; that's the only way we can react. When you start looking back, this is the wrong approach. We mustn't forget that a lot of the people have been with Ferrari for 10 or 15 years. We know the situation, and we have to address it in a strict way, but taking away the emotional part."
Ferrari's difficulties increased in China when Massa, having worked his way from the midfield into third, was brought to a halt with an electrical problem – a rare retirement for cars that normally run like clockwork. "We need to improve the performance, as you can see on the track," Massa said. "But we need to improve the reliability as well. That's quite a big issue at the moment. But we have some good ideas which are going to improve the car and we have some good numbers for the future on the aerodynamic point of view. But you never know what the other teams are doing. They are working very hard, so that's why we are here to do our job in the best way possible. For sure it's difficult, but we are all together, we are motivated to make a good job. The situation is not easy but it's quite possible to get away from it."
The pressure on Domenicali comes from outside the team as well as within thanks to Italy's newspapers devoting pages to Ferrari and formula one. But Ferrari have failed before; witness the 21 barren years before Schumacher won the first of five successive titles in 2000. This latest dip in competitiveness, while a surprise, is scarcely a matter for national debate.
"There is not the feeling in Italy that you might think," says Pino Allievi, motor sport correspondent of La Gazzetta dello Sport. "Yes, Ferrari is a national team and, when they do well, everyone is happy. But otherwise people do not care that much, not when the football is still on and this is just the start of the motor racing season. Maybe there will be protests if this continues when the football ends. But, at this moment, the people of Italy have far more serious things to think about."
