Jacques Villeneuve: “The Ferrari is the new Mercedes”

This year, Ferrari seems transformed. Indeed, the Scuderia has had many disappointments and a long drought in the constructors’ championship (since 2008). But this year, the engineers of the prancing horse company seem to have perfectly succeeded in adapting to the new regulations.

With two wins in the first three races, Ferrari dominates the beginning of the championship with its speed and reliability. This is a performance that the 1997 world champion, Jacques Villeneuve, wanted to highlight.

“Ferrari is marginally faster, but their car is apparently easier to drive and set up. They will always be at the forefront during a difficult weekend,” he explains in the columns of Formule1.nl.

« Charles Leclerc continues to win. He now has the championship under his control. Of course, there are still 20 races to be competed and a lot of work to be done. But he has his teammate at a distance, the team more or less behind him, and a gap between him and his main rival Max Verstappen. In Italy, people often ask me, “Is this the year, is it really going to happen?”. The tifosi are struggling to make sense of it. You can see them thinking, “When is it going to go wrong?”. They are used to that after the Alonso and Vettel years. But the Ferrari is very fast – in fact, it’s the new Mercedes!

»

The Canadian continued by stating that Scuderia’s main rival, Red Bull, also has a very good car, but Sergio Perez and Max Verstappen have to step up their game to gain a few tenths.

He adds that the reliability issues of the Austrian team are currently costing them the second place in the constructor ranking and a top 4 position in the driver ranking.