Ferrari

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLpA67lg4Lo

When Fernando Alonso last retired from an Italian Grand Prix, he was the enemy.

The Spaniard entered the Monza weekend, the 15th round of the 2006 season, with a 12-point lead over Michael Schumacher in the Drivers' Championship.

He, after triumphing in six of the opening nine race of the campaign, was without a win in five events, in which time his title rival had secured three successive victories.

The momentum was changing; something had to give.

And it was Alonso's car that did so, with plumes of smoke billowing from the rear of his Renault R26 as he approached Monza's first chicane.

The home crowd cheered and jeered—so loudly, in fact, that their hurrahs and their air horns could be heard above the nearly deafening screech of the V8 engines.

They reveled in the arrival of a green crane to take his car to the scrap heap.

They punched the air, they rattled the catch fencing, and they jumped up and down as Alonso—head lowered, helmet still on—fled the scene and contemplated the loss of another 10 points to Schumacher, the Ferrari driver.

https://twitter.com/alo_oficial/status/508551316319535104

Fast-forward eight years, and Alonso is the hero, the one glimmer of hope in a season, an era, of disrepair.

The blue and yellow of Renault, after the grey of McLaren and the white, yellow and orange of his second spell at Renault, has been replaced with red.

Scarlet red. Ferrari red.

His demise, at the exact spot where he withdrew from the 2006 event, was not greeted with delight but with a stunned silence.

The adoring crowd, naturally, edged forward—but those cheers and jeers of eight years ago were replaced with a round of polite, muted, sympathetic applause.

That green crane again tiptoed its way to Alonso's stricken vehicle—but this time with all the glory of a pallbearer.

And the driver himself? The helmet remained fastened to his head until he returned to the garage, a telltale sign of fury and crushing disappointment.

The honour of driving a Ferrari in an Italian Grand Prix at Monza is one of the true privileges of not only Formula One but also sport itself.

There is no such thing as home advantage in F1, with the paying public so distanced from on-track proceedings, but when a Ferrari zooms around the Curva Grande, the Lesmo corners, the Ascari chicane and Parabolica at the beginning of September, it seems to run on so much more than merely Shell fuel.

It runs on vibrancy, energy, excitement and passion.

A Formula One race at Monza is a celebration of all that is good about the prancing horse.

The problem this season, however, is that you would have to look long and hard to find anything positive about the sport's most successful team.

It would not be unfair to suggest that the ERS failure that, according to the official F1 website, forced Alonso to watch from the sidelines after just 28 laps, put the double world champion out of his misery.

The heartbreak of the 2010 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix and the 2012 Brazilian Grand Prix—races that saw Alonso miss out on adding to his tally of world titles—will almost certainly rank as the most disappointing days of his Ferrari career. But the 2014 Italian Grand Prix, in isolation, must surely be considered the lowest point of his tenure with the Maranello-based outfit.

https://twitter.com/alo_oficial/status/508690387913822208

His fastest time in Q3, which was only good enough for seventh on the grid, was, per the official F1 website, more than 1.3 seconds slower than that of Lewis Hamilton, the pole-sitter. 

And although Ferrari's substandard power unit meant that Monza, with its four long straights, was bound to be among the team's most troublesome circuits this season, even the magic of Alonso, the man who has since 2010 made a living out of dragging the prancing horse through difficulties, could not disguise its flaws.

The Spaniard was, according to the FIA's maximum speed data, ranked no higher than 13th quickest in any of Monza's three sectors and, as a result, was trapped in and around the fringes of the top 10 for the duration of his race.

The 33-year-old went on to offer an apology to Ferrari's fans, per ESPN.co.uk:

Obviously we are not happy with the results in front of our people. This is one thing for the teams and one for the fans—we were not giving them any special result unfortunately; yesterday we were not fast enough and today we were struggling around position eight, seven, nine or whatever. We cannot do much more than this and I feel sad for them but very thankful for the support we had.

We've been in a very difficult season but nevertheless from Thursday here everyone was giving us maximum support and cheering us on, we felt this love for our team in the good moments and in the bad moments and unfortunately we did not give them this support.

Alonso had something of a weekend off at Monza, with speculation surrounding the future of Ferrari's president, Luca di Montezemolo—as reported by Autosport.com's Jonathan Noble—rather than the Spaniard.

The double world champion has been linked with a return to McLaren for an extended period of time, with Daniel Johnson of The Telegraph reporting last month that the Woking-based team had intensified efforts to re-sign Alonso.

Although Alonso reiterated his desire to remain at Ferrari to Pete Gill of Sky Sports only last week, the sheer hopelessness of the team's performance on home turf is likely to plant more seeds of doubt in his mind.

When Alonso returned to the pit lane on Sunday afternoon, he made his way toward the pit wall, poked his (still helmeted) head through the gap in the fence, waved toward the main grandstand and applauded his pilgrims, and the Tifosi responded with a standing ovation for their favourite son.

It was reminiscent of a footballer saluting his fans for one last time ahead of a big-money, worst-kept-secret transfer to a higher-reputation club.

When a driver gains no enjoyment from driving a Ferrari at Monza, it's time to move on.

And nobody—not even the Tifosi—could begrudge Alonso a move away.

Time for a quick word association game: What pops into your head when you think of Ferrari?

Do you picture the tifosi, with their red caps and flags, standing proudly on the spectator banking of the world's Formula One circuits? Do you imagine the podium at Monza, gleaming in the September sunshine, surrounded by thousands of track invaders?

Perhaps the very mention of Ferrari takes you back to an afternoon spent marvelling at the team making a mockery of their opposition.

Or do you just see two red cars blending into the crowd of the starting grid? Two red cars representing just another team. Just another team.

However you respond to the thought of the F-word arguably reveals more about you than the team; it separates the sporting romanticists from the pragmatists. 

And Daniel Ricciardo, it seems, is a member of the latter group.

The Red Bull driver, who conquered Ferrari by passing Fernando Alonso with just three laps remaining to win last weekend's Hungarian Grand Prix, has ridiculed the notion that appearing for the Prancing Horse is a primary goal of any Formula One driver's career.

The 25-year-old was quoted by The F1 Times as telling Italian publication Gazzeta dello Sport: 

To be honest I think this is just a cliche.

For sure some drivers have this dream, but I think it's related to the fact that their parents loved Ferrari for its great history and cultural heritage.

Ricciardo's opinion on the Ferrari fascination is more noteworthy than any other current driver; the Australian, due to his background [his father was born in Sicily], is the closest to an Italian representative on the grid since the Pescara-born Jarno Trulli departed Caterham at the beginning of the 2012 season. 

That a driver with Italian roots has admitted to having little emotional affiliation with the Prancing Horse, effectively the Italian national team in F1, suggests the apparent love for Ferrari among the sport's supporters is not necessarily shared among the drivers themselves.

Drivers, after all, are the ones who have to make cold, unemotional and unsentimental decisions in order to further their careers and fulfil their personal ambitions, with the pleasure of doing so with their favoured team, more often than not, an added bonus.

It is, however, undeniable that Ferrari, and all they represent, carry a certain mystique unmatched by any other institution in the history of Formula One.

The team's enduring success has, of course, played an instrumental role in creating that image.

Ferrari, the only outfit to have competed in every single season, are by a distance the most triumphant team to have ever graced F1, with 16 constructors' world championships and 15 drivers' titles to their name.

The Prancing Horse, according to the official Formula One website, has recorded 221 race victories, 207 pole positions and 230 fastest laps.

The appeal of the team to drivers, with those statistics in mind, is clear: Ferrari, for much of their time in Formula One, have been synonymous with victory.

Yet, the appeal of Ferrari stretches far beyond an outstanding on-track success rate.

The organisation, founded by Enzo Ferrari, was built upon the old-fashioned—and in the modern era, increasingly fanciful—principle that no individual or driver is bigger than the team.

That platitude is echoed across a range of institutions across almost every team sport, but none has implemented it so robustly and relentlessly as the Prancing Horse.

It has, of course, dropped the team into the boiling waters of controversy on numerous occasions, with the saga of team orders at the 2002 Austrian Grand Prix and 2010 German Grand Prix prime examples.

Yet, the fact that the Italian team weathered the storm, emerging unscathed and even with enhanced credibility in some quarters, is testament to the strength of the Ferrari brand.

Which other team, after all, would possess the bravery to dump Alain Prost, a three-time world champion at the time, in the midst of a season for criticising the car in 1991? Which other team would pay a world champion not to drive their car, as Ferrari did with Kimi Raikkonen at the end of 2009?

Although Luca di Montezemolo, Ferrari's chairman, was widely accused of stupidity after publicly rebuking Alonso, the team's star driver, 12 months ago, it was a timely, admirable rejection of the sporting poison that has come to be known as "player power."

And with such an unconventional, blunt and sometimes brutal atmosphere existing within the team, it is understandable that driving for Ferrari is the dream of some and the worst nightmare of others.

Despite Ferrari operating so differently than their rivals, there is one thing that links every Formula One team: the need to win.

The Prancing Horse, despite its golden past, is currently without a race victory in 25 races and has failed to win a world championship of any kind since 2008, with the charm of Ferrari suffering as a result. 

The Ferrari team whom the grid's current drivers grew up watching being taken to victory by Michael Schumacher, Jean Todt and Ross Brawn is not the same Ferrari team they now race against and could have the chance to join in the coming years.

Ferrari are a less formidable force in the modern era. They are growing ever more bland, becoming just another team.

That failure to capture the imagination on track makes those glorious, scarlet-red cars little more than fashion accessories, reminders of the past, rather than representations of an all-conquering establishment.

Any references to the spirit of Ferrari and pledges of loyalty to the Prancing Horse—such as Raikkonen's admission to Pete Gill of Sky Sports that Ferrari will have the honour of being his last team—are, despite best intentions, hollow and insincere. 

Ferrari remain comfortably the most iconic, coveted and divine team in Formula One—but their history, heritage and ideals will only remain relevant and appealing, to both fans and drivers, as long as they succeed on the track.

If not, the Prancing Horse could eventually find itself straining its neck to look high up at a certain three-pointed star.

Thirty-five years ago this month, Gilles Villeneuve and Rene Arnoux produced one of the greatest moments in Formula One history. During the French Grand Prix at Dijon, they fought an epic, all-out, wheel-to-wheel battle over the final laps of the race—for second place.

In the words of Ricky Bobby's father, "If you ain't first, you're last," and rarely has a second-place finish been as celebrated as Villeneuve's.

Last Sunday at the Hungaroring, though, Fernando Alonso put in an equally improbable second-place drive in a car that had previously finished as high as third only once. The importance of Alonso's race comes not from its drama—although the Hungarian Grand Prix had plenty of that—but from what it tells us about the Spaniard.

Unlike that venerable French Grand Prix, the Budapest race did not confirm Alonso's credentials as a fighter and a racer (we were reminded of those earlier this month at Silverstone), but it did demonstrate that Alonso is the best driver on the grid. Even at 33 years old, in his 13th F1 season, Alonso is a world-champion-calibre driver—if only he were not repeatedly let down by Ferrari.

Despite a massive budget, the Italian team has failed to give their star driver a car worthy of his talents since his arrival in Maranello in 2010.

That year, and in 2012, Alonso nearly managed to steal the Drivers' Championship from Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel, but even those performances were in spite of his car, not because of it. In those two seasons, Alonso had 23 podium finishes while his teammate, Felipe Massa, had seven.

In Hungary, Alonso's epic drive was not rewarded as it should have been, with a race victory. Instead, despite driving nearly half the race on one set of soft tyres (32 of 70 laps) and putting in competitive lap times throughout, he was relegated to second place.

He could have finished lower, too. Were it not for Alonso's ability to protect his tyres while still flying around the track, the two Mercedes might also have found their way past.

So, why despite Ferrari's struggles, has Alonso repeatedly voiced his commitment to the Italian manufacturer? Surely the reported interest from McLaren must tempt him (or maybe not, coming from a team three spots behind Ferrari in the Constructors' standings).

The reason might have something to do with Villeneuve. Specifically, Alonso has not yet achieved the quasi-mythical status among Ferrari's rabid fans, the tifosi, that drivers like Villeneuve and Michael Schumacher have.

Yes, the tifosi love Alonso now, while he is driving their car, but he will not join the pantheon of all-time Ferrari greats without bringing a title back to Maranello.

Alonso's F1 legacy is already secure. He is a two-time world champion and fifth on the all-time win list. But the tifosi, the most passionate fanbase in the sport, don't care about Alonso's two titles with Renault. They want him to win one for them.

In the documentary 1, Schumacher admitted that he did not really understand the importance of Ferrari before he drove for the team. His five championships for the Scuderia cemented his legacy with the team's fans—a bond that was demonstrated by the outpouring of grief following Schumacher's skiing accident last year.

Alonso is aware of his legacy and, like many professional athletes, he has an ego that needs stroking. (If he didn't, he would not have authorised a museum exhibition celebrating his career while still an active driver.) Ferrari is the oldest and most successful team in the sport and Alonso told the BBC's Andrew Benson, "I know that winning with Ferrari will mean more than winning with another team."

That is why he is still in Maranello, despite so few signs that the team will be able to give him a championship-calibre car before the end of his career. Even if new team principal Marco Mattiacci's revamp of the team is successful, there is still a lot of ground for Ferrari to make up to catch Mercedes and Red Bull. And in that case, there could be many more races like the Hungarian Grand Prix in Alonso's future.

Alonso's performance in Hungary was amazing, but in the end, all it did was remind us that his talent is being wasted with Ferrari.

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Kimi Raikkonen's return to Ferrari and his battle with Fernando Alonso, his new teammate and fellow world champion, were supposed to be two of the big stories of this Formula One season.

However, the Italian team failed to build an engine to match Mercedes or a chassis that could compete with Red Bull. Consequently, Ferrari—currently third in the Constructors' Championship—is closer to Williams and Force India in fourth and fifth than they are to the top two teams.

The bigger surprise, though, has been the difference between Raikkonen and Alonso. The Spaniard is dominating his teammate—and it is not even close.

With the news that Raikkonen will likely retire from F1 at the end of the 2015 season, per Autosport's Jonathan Noble and Glenn Freeman, there is a real chance that the Iceman's career will end with a whimper.

While Alonso is sitting a solid fourth in the championship, with Ferrari's only podium of the season and only one finish below sixth place, Raikkonen is in twelfth and has not beaten his teammate yet. The Finn's lowest previous finish in the Drivers' standings was 10th in 2001, his rookie season.

This could also be the first season since 2001 that Raikkonen does not score a podium finish (he was fourth on two occasions that year but has not finished higher than seventh in 2014).

Raikkonen's impressive form with Lotus over the last two years make his struggles this season even more shocking. In 2012, his first season back in F1 after a two-year hiatus, he hung around the periphery of the title fight most of the season and picked up a victory in Abu Dhabi, ultimately finishing third in the championship.

Last year, Raikkonen started strong with a win in Australia and three second-place finishes in the first five races. After the Hungarian Grand Prix, round 10 of 19, he was second in the championship, 38 points behind Sebastian Vettel.

The German won every race for the rest of the season, while Raikkonen managed just two more podium finishes before a first-lap retirement in Abu Dhabi and subsequent back surgery ended his season. Still, Raikkonen finished fifth in the championship (and could have been as high as third, had he not missed the last two races).

Free from Lotus' limited resources—apparently the team could not even afford his salary—2015 was supposed to be a triumphant return to Maranello for Raikkonen. His 2007 title is still the last Drivers' Championship won by the Scuderia, and it does not look like they will be adding another anytime soon.

There has been plenty of speculation as to the reasons for Raikkonen's struggles in 2014, and it is clear that he is not comfortable in the F14 T. NBC's Will Buxton, writing on his personal blog, speculated that the Finn's lack of pace stems from his difficulties getting used to the new brake-by-wire system and finding a comfort zone with Ferrari's power steering.

Raikkonen should eventually come to grips with his car and may even be able to challenge his teammate this year, but they will still be fighting with Force India and Williams instead of Mercedes and Red Bull. And with Raikkonen set to walk away at the end of next season, there is not much time to right the ship.

The Ferrari team is in a state of upheaval right now, having replaced their team principal, Stefano Domenicali, with the inexperienced (in racing circles) Marco Mattiacci.

Last week, Corriere dello Sport (via ESPN F1) reported that Ferrari's chief engine designer, Luca Marmorini, had left the team as well. Mattiacci told the Italian paper, "we need to prepare a different team for 2015."

A complete housecleaning may indeed be the answer at Ferrari, but it is unlikely to produce immediate results. Mercedes already have more than a year's head start with their revolutionary power unit, and it will probably take Ferrari more than one season to catch them.

And that leaves us with the unappetizing prospect of Raikkonen—one of the most exciting and enigmatic drivers of his era—going out on a low note.

Before the season, we were teased with memories and visions of the epic battles fought by Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna at McLaren in the late 1980s, but those visions have not rematerialised, at least not at Ferrari.

I hear there is a decent scrap going on over at Mercedes.

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Ferrari's choice of driver to replace the injured Kimi Raikkonen for this week's two-day test at Silverstone was telling.

The Prancing Horse could have played it safe and allowed Pedro de la Rosa, their regular test driver, an extended run in 2014-spec machinery. They could have asked Fernando Alonso, a two-time world champion, to hang around for a couple of days after the British Grand Prix to do the donkey work.

But they opted for Jules Bianchi, the Marussia driver, to fill the Raikkonen-sized void.

It was by no means the most surprising choice, of course—the Frenchman has been a member of the Ferrari Driver Academy since 2009—but it was by far the most fascinating.

It is almost a year since Daniel Ricciardo, the then-Toro Rosso driver, was handed the opportunity to participate in the young drivers' test at Silverstone for Red Bull with a view to replacing Mark Webber at the championship-winning team for 2014.

He took his chance and the rest, as they say, is history.

Similarly, Bianchi's chance to display his talent behind the wheel of the Ferrari F14 T feels like an audition for a future race seat.

After all, the only conclusion to draw from Ferrari's decision to invite the Frenchman to test is that when Raikkonen or Alonso eventually depart the team, Bianchi—provided he impresses the Italian squad with his conduct at Silverstone and maintains his form with Marussia—will be the prime candidate for a full-time drive.

But would Ferrari be wise to fast-track the 24-year-old to a leading seat?

Bianchi's F1 career, thus far, is, of course, defined by his ninth place finish at this year's Monaco Grand Prix, which ended Marussia's run of four full seasons and 83 grands prix without scoring a single point since the team arrived on the grid as Virgin in 2010.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WESwG_hCht4

The Monte Carlo race represented something of a breakthrough moment for team and driver, elevating both to the next level of the sport's pecking order and injecting renewed belief.

For Bianchi in particular, the result in Monaco did a fine job of papering over the cracks of what, until that point, had been a difficult second season.  

Like a musician struggling to live up to the fresh sound of his debut album, Bianchi—despite maintaining a pace advantage over teammate Max Chilton into year two—allowed a series of errors to creep into his driving.

The stewards decided that he was at fault for a first-lap crash with Lotus driver Pastor Maldonado in Malaysia, which led to the Frenchman receiving penalty points on his super license, before allowing himself to become embroiled in an unnecessary, irresponsible string of tangles in quick succession with Adrian Sutil, the Sauber driver, at the following race in Bahrain.

Even in the Monaco Grand Prix, it is worth recalling, Bianchi was slapped with two in-race penalties for failing to start from the correct grid spot before making the mistake of serving his first punishment under safety car conditions (although you would assume that Bianchi was not entirely to blame for these instances).

His performances since Monaco, though, have generally seen Bianchi revert to the form he showed for the vast majority of 2013, with the Frenchman claiming the team's best ever qualifying result in last weekend's British Grand Prix.

Bianchi is, if we are to judge his performances this season, a driver with stacks of potential but still a little rough around the edges.

In other words, he is not what Ferrari require in their current state.

And if we are to presume that both Alonso and Raikkonen will remain at Maranello for 2015, with the latter then pushing through with his plans to retire at the end of that season—as Jonathan Noble and Glenn Freeman of Autosport reported over the Silverstone weekend—it will not be until 2016 that Bianchi will have an opportunity to join Ferrari.

So the pressing question is this: If his road to Ferrari is blocked for another year, where does Bianchi spend 2015?

The most obvious move would be to join Sauber.

The Swiss team have a long-standing affiliation with Ferrari and have in the past acted as a training ground for drivers who would go on to represent the Prancing Horse—including 2007 world champion Raikkonen and nearly-man Felipe Massa, with ex-Sauber driver Sergio Perez a former stablemate of Bianchi in Ferrari's young driver program. 

The addition of Bianchi would return some meaning to Sauber's driver line-up, with the current pairing of Sutil and Esteban Gutierrez arguably the most underwhelming on the grid.

However, the team's financial concerns and rapid regression from plucky midfielders to anonymous backmarkers in recent seasons could not only encourage Sauber to rely on low quality pay drivers but be considered a backwards step for Bianchi, with the Hinwil-based team still without a point after nine races this season.

The idea that driving for Marussia would improve a driver's chances of landing a Ferrari seat would have been laughable just 18 months ago, but it is now the reality facing Bianchi.

Despite their recent on-track achievements, expectations remain low for the popular Banbury-based outfit, meaning any half-decent results Bianchi earns are portrayed as the work of a future world champion.

And even of the occasions when that might not strictly be the case, it does no harm to the Frenchman's reputation. You only had to observe the fuss that surrounded Bianchi when he climbed out of his car in Monaco to see how just a single result can make a driver's stock go through the roof.

A bad race? Nobody notices, it's the car's fault. A good race? He's the hero.

Bianchi's outing at Silverstone this week is effectively a reward for that afternoon in Monaco, but it is just the start of his rise to the top.

It is in a racing driver's nature to want everything yesterday, but if he is to fulfill his promise, Bianchi's career requires careful management and pragmatism.

Good things, after all, come to those who wait.

The British Grand Prix is beginning to make a habit of creating compelling, exciting races which come dangerously close to turning into a disaster.

Last year's event at Silverstone Circuit, of course, was marred by a number of tyre explosions, which led to world champions Kimi Raikkonen and Fernando Alonso swerving across the track to avoid a face full of rubber.

The situation was so concerning that Charlie Whiting, Formula One's race director, admitted to Motorsport.com that he came "quite close" to enforcing red flag conditions.

But Whiting, in the end, resisted the urge.

He tried his utmost to ignore the red button, presumably sent his best wishes to Pirelli boss Paul Hembery—who was watching his products burst into smithereens before his very eyes in front of an audience of a few million people—and allowed a tense, dramatic race to develop.

F1, to all intents and purposes, got away with one.

A year down the line, though, and there was no such dawdling, with the race halted within a few corners after a crash involving Raikkonen on the Wellington Straight.

The incident was arguably the most frightening Formula One shunt since the first-corner crash at the 2012 Belgium Grand Prix—if not the first-lap collision between Michael Schumacher and Vitantonio Liuzzi at Abu Dhabi in 2010—with Raikkonen experiencing a force of 47G, according to Pete Gill of Sky Sports.

To put that into perspective, jet fighter pilots—according to the Daily Mail's Phil Duncan—rarely deal with any more than 12G.

Considering the sheer violence of the impact, it is staggering that the 2007 world champion climbed out of his car with little more than bruising to his knee and ankle, according to Autosport's Jonathan Noble.

Yet it would not be entirely unfair to suggest that Raikkonen could have done slightly more to prevent the accident from occurring.

As noted by Anthony Davidson, the former F1 driver, during Sky Sports' television coverage of the British Grand Prix, the Finn's car appeared twitchy in the opening sequence of corners:

The Ferrari F14 T has constantly struggled to find its feet under acceleration all season long, and that continued as Raikkonen eased his foot onto the pedal on the exit of the Loop, with the rear end stepping out of line.

The next corner of the lap, Aintree, requires drivers to jink to the left whilst in the process of acceleration, making it tailor-made for the Ferrari to run wide.

And sure enough, Raikkonen did, sliding off the track and onto the runoff area as those around him began the trek down the Wellington Straight.

If you were being harsh here, you would question the manner that Raikkonen rejoined the track, which, after all, turned a slight off-track excursion into something much more serious.

As you would expect from a leading driver, Raikkonen identified the one section of the runoff area without a strip of grass to make his return to the circuit—but he appeared to rejoin with too much speed and at too wide an angle.

His reasons for doing this are clear: Having started out of position in 18th on the grid, the Finn would have targeted the beginning of the race as the ideal opportunity to rescue his weekend and was therefore eager to prevent a further loss of ground to those ahead.

Those circumstances, and the general surge in adrenaline and competitiveness that comes with a grand prix start anyway, ultimately led to Raikkonen's crash.

The angle and speed at which he rejoined the track led to Raikkonen hitting a bump on the grass verge, unsettling the car and spitting it into the barrier beside the spectators' overpass, with the 34-year-old lucky not to hit the guardrail closer to the bridge's pillar.

Even with the impact at an angle, the sheer violence of the crash saw one of the Ferrari's tyres rebound across the track like a tennis ball, striking the rear of Max Chilton's Marussia when it could so easily have landed elsewhere with potentially devastating consequences.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDQiYNOsiBI

Raikkonen's car itself also spun across the track into the paths of Kamui Kobayashi, the Caterham driver, and Williams' Felipe Massa, who produced one of the most heroic instances of avoiding action in recent memory.

The Brazilian's view of Raikkonen's crash was obscured as he was too busy sniffing around the rear of Kobayashi's Caterham on the Wellington Straight in his own bid to recover ground—but hit the brakes at the very first sight of dust kicked up by the Ferrari, sensing that something awry had occurred up the road.

Likewise, once the path had cleared to offer a first glimpse of Raikkonen twirling across the track, Massa began to manipulate his car to create a spin of his own, limiting the odds of a dreaded T-bone crash.

And with the ultra-low noses of the 2014-spec F1 cars, the notion of a Ferrari being scooped into the air at over 150 mph is not worth thinking about. 

The race that followed, after an hourlong delay to repair the stricken barrier, was stupendous.

We saw Alonso and Sebastian Vettel, arguably the best drivers on the grid, race head-to-head in a thrilling battle. We saw the championship leader, Nico Rosberg, retire from the lead of the race. And we saw a popular victor in Lewis Hamilton, the home hero.

Silverstone, hosting its 50th grand prix in 2014, has delivered again.

But it could have been so much worse.

Earlier this week, Rob Smedley, Felipe Massa's former race engineer at Ferrari, explained the route that Williams—his new employers—must take to return to winning ways.

Massa and his teammate Valtteri Bottas had secured the team's first front-row lockout since 2003 at last month's Austrian Grand Prix—but a conservative strategy, on a day when Williams had the car to challenge the all-conquering Mercedes for victory, led to Massa and Bottas slipping to fourth and third, respectively, by the chequered flag.

Having won only one race in the last decade, Smedley implied that Williams' mindset played a large role in the team's fall down the order at the Red Bull Ring, telling Ben Anderson of Autosport:

I think we have to look inwardly at ourselves and understand how we improve in every single tiny detail, because it's in the details, there's no big magic bullet.

We were racing against a very professional outfit [Mercedes] with a quicker car, but very well organised. And why are they so well organised? Because they've got such a depth of experience racing at that end of the field.

From racing last year, as Williams were, in 13th, 14th, 15th position, to racing in first, second, third, fourth position is a completely different thing. Believe me, because I've done both ends.

It's just about learning how to race at this end—from an operations point of view, from a performance point of view—it's just about adding little bits of performance in all areas of the car, [looking at] how we operate, making mistakes and going back and fixing them and not doing them again.

While Williams, with the help of Smedley, are in the process of transforming from a midfield team to a front-running outfit, Ferrari are rapidly heading in the opposite direction.

The Prancing Horse's lacklustre display in qualifying for the British Grand Prix, which saw former world champions Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen fail to progress from Q1, was the lowest point of a draining 2014 season.

The campaign that had resembled a fresh start, a clean slate, has delivered the same old disappointment, with a best result of only third place in the eight grands prix thus far.

Ferrari are without a win in almost 14 months—but despite their extended absence from the top step of the podium, they retain the mentality of serial world champions.

And Ferrari's approach, like Williams' in Austria, played a role in their own downfall at Silverstone.

The team's decision to hold Alonso and Raikkonen in the garage, aiming to extract the most from the ever-drying track on fresh slick tyres in the dying minutes of Q1, backfired spectacularly. 

While other teams took advantage of the optimal conditions to book their tickets to Q2 in advance, Ferrari were among the last to send their drivers out and were therefore always bound to be vulnerable to the threat of yellow flags and the return of wet conditions.

Both of those hazards, of course, came into play—with Alonso himself bringing out the caution flags after an off-track excursion in the rain—and Ferrari were trapped in the danger zone.

The most curious aspect of Ferrari's performance, however, was how the team adopted the role of front-runner.

The privilege of sitting in the garage, staring at the timing screens and waiting for your peers to do the drying up is usually reserved for teams such as Mercedes, whose performance advantage is such that they can go on track whenever they please and immediately set a leading lap time. 

With a season-best grid spot of fourth, though, Ferrari have never had that margin for error this year.

Their handling of Q1 smacked of naivety, which—along with Alonso's comment to Ben Anderson and Pablo Elizalde of Autosport that the team need to "speed up some of the communications"—suggests the blame lies at the feet of Marco Mattiacci, the painfully raw team principal.

A session played out in changeable conditions presents opportunities for those on the pit wall to make challenging, yet potentially decisive, decisions for their drivers, and although Mattiacci gained praise (of sorts) from Raikkonen this week—with the Finn telling ESPN F1 how his team principal is a "very nice guy"—the Italian has failed his first real test in the heat of battle.

That Mattiacci has the power to make such decisions at all, having replaced Stefano Domenicali in April, despite having no previous F1 experience, is a reflection of Ferrari's fall from grace and lack of stability.

It remains hard to believe that Mattiacci will be anything other than a short-term appointment, while Alonso continues to be linked with a return to McLaren—according to Jonathan McEvoy of the Daily Mail—and Raikkonen seemed to target 2015 as his last season in F1 when speaking to Autosport's Jonathan Noble and Glenn Freeman at Silverstone.

There is an aimlessness at Ferrari, a team full of individuals, which is now seeping into their on-track performances and results.

And with no direction, they are a midfield team with the mindset of world champions.

The Silverstone shock should provide a much-needed reality check.

As his team continues to struggle, Ferrari chairman Luca di Montezemolo has kept up his campaign to change Formula One.

Of course, with the introduction of hybrid power units in 2014, the sport has just undergone its biggest change in recent memory. And that change has already delivered several exciting races, shaken up the running order of the last few years and produced a fascinating battle for the Drivers' Championship (albeit amongst the drivers of one team). 

But Montezemolo is sure that F1 can do better. Two weeks ago, according to the Ferrari website, the 66-year-old Italian made a formal proposal to bring together the key stakeholders in the sport to improve the spectacle of F1.

We all want exciting racing, but we also understand that not every race can have six cars, all from different teams, finish within a few seconds of the winner. That has never been the case in F1 and it never will be.

Recently, fans have had to deal with several misguided attempts to improve the quality of the on-track product, all of them at least implicitly approved by Montezemolo and Ferrari—remember, the Italian team holds a veto on rule changes. From DRS to double points to standing restarts, it seems there is a bottomless reserve of silly ideas which are supposed to make people more interested in watching a grand prix.

It does not seem to be working, though, as television audiences continue to decline—although that probably has more to do with the decision to move to subscription-only broadcasters in many countries.

Meanwhile, the Ferrari chairman has demonstrated that he cannot or will not think in the best interests of the future of the sport. Montezemolo has pushed back against fuel efficiency regulations, saying that fans are not smart enough to understand them, despite the benefits for the sport: F1 is now more relevant to road car technology and Honda has returned as an engine manufacturer.

Montezemolo also opposes a cost cap, but this is one of the key changes F1 should make to improve the sport.

Spending is out of control right now and the smaller teams cannot compete. A restriction in the amount the larger teams can spend would close the performance gap between teams, which would naturally lead to better racing.

In the same vein, F1 should distribute its prize money more equitably. The best teams should still be rewarded, but right now the distribution is tilted so heavily in favour of the top teams (and then tilted even further toward Ferrari, specifically) that it is very difficult for the smaller, usually less successful teams to break into that upper tier.

None of this would favour Ferrari, though, who operate on one of the largest budgets in the sport. So even if it would make for a better show, Montezemolo is not in favour of any redistribution of wealth.

If the Ferrari chairman is serious about improving the racing, he should also be pushing to get rid of all the gimmicks F1 has introduced. No one is impressed by watching a driver press a button to gain an advantage that the car in front of him does not have and then cruise past.

Similarly, no one will be impressed if a driver loses out on a championship because the final race of the season is now arbitrarily worth twice as many points as any other grand prix.

Montezemolo is correct that the fans want a good show, but he—and the rest of the powers that be in F1—are going about it the wrong way. Rather than inventing ideas to create more passing, they should just close the financial gap between the teams and then let them race. 

But that would involve giving up Ferrari's advantages, and that is not what the company's chairman has in mind when he says the sport needs to improve. We would not be hearing a peep from Maranello if Ferrari had won seven of eight races this season.

And that is why there is no cost cap. Despite public statements to the contrary, none of the teams are looking out for the best interests of the sport. They are looking out for themselves.

Unfortunately, the FIA has abrogated its power and responsibility to regulate F1, handing it to the very teams that cannot see beyond their own noses. But that is a topic for another day.

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For most Formula One drivers, driving for Ferrari is one of the most sacred opportunities in the sport.

The history, heritage and achievements of the Prancing Horse, the most successful team in history and the only outfit to compete in every single season of F1, resonates in every aspiring racer and every boyhood fan.

Not Fernando Alonso, though: He's always considered himself a McLaren man.

For the same reasons why many of his colleagues and competitors gravitated towards Ferrari, Alonso drifted towards Ayrton Senna.

Alonso has previously been quoted by Ian Parkes of the Daily Mail as describing how Senna became something of an obsession for him as a youngster growing up in Oviedo, Spain.

Despite being unable to view the Brazilian's performances on television in his homeland, Alonso said, pictures of Senna dominated his schoolbook and a poster of the three-time world champion adorned his bedroom wall.

Even his first go-karts were decorated in the white and rocket red livery of the Marlboro McLarens, which Senna guided to 35 of his 41 grand prix victories.

Ahead of last weekend's Canadian Grand Prix, Alonso was quoted by Andrew Benson of BBC Sport as stating how he would not retire from Formula One until he has secured his third Drivers' Championship, expressing his belief that "the the third puts you in a list of very important names." 

The thought of equalling Senna's three world titles, achieved in 1988, 1990 and 1991, is undoubtedly playing on Alonso's mind as he continues to hunt down his third crown. 

Alonso's fondness of Senna from a young age, and his clear willingness to emulate the man who is widely considered the finest driver in F1 history, makes it saddening that his one-season stay at McLaren in 2007 ended so spectacularly ugly.

The Spaniard's desire to enjoy preferential treatment over teammate Lewis Hamilton led to Alonso sabotaging the then-rookie's final qualifying run at the Hungarian Grand Prix, below.

Soon after, Alonso—according to Kevin Garside of The Telegraph at the time—allegedly threatened team principal Ron Dennis, the man who had played such an instrumental role in shaping Senna's career, with documents which could significantly harm the team during the "Spygate" scandal. This scandal ultimately led to the team receiving a record fine of $100 million and expulsion from the 2007 Constructors' Championship.

The chances of Alonso ever returning to Woking following such a catastrophic breakdown in relations were desperately slim—until last year's Singapore Grand Prix, when Martin Whitmarsh, McLaren's team principal at the time, was quoted by Sky Sports' Pete Gill as saying:

Yes, if I could [I would sign Alonso].

Most teams up and down the pitlane would happily sign Fernando Alonso, he's a very talented driver... we are open to anything and in the long-term he would be a great asset.

Fernando is in charge of his own destiny, but we'll see.

Alonso flirted back by telling Andrew Benson of BBC Sport how he would be open to a return to McLaren, saying: "I always said that there are no problems with anyone, it was just the philosophy of the team, especially one man in the team that is not there [any more]."

Since then, however, Whitmarsh has been removed from his position and the "one man" whom Alonso referred to, Dennis, has returned to an executive position at McLaren.

Yet Dennis, over the Monaco Grand Prix weekend, was quoted by Marco Canseco of Marca as suggesting that he would have "no problem" working with Alonso again.

The major sticking point to any potential deal, then, is just how willing both men would be to become colleagues again.

Despite Dennis' seemingly relaxed public stance, there are valid question marks over his comfort with the idea of working alongside someone who played a significant role in arguably the darkest period in his team's history.

Dennis, remember, has been a figurehead at McLaren since 1980, and it is entirely plausible that the events of seven years ago are still too recent, too fresh in the memory to allow a seamless reunion to take place.

Conversely, there is a belief—as Kevin Eason, the Formula One journalist, recently pointed out whilst appearing on Sky Sports' Midweek Report television programme—that Dennis is pragmatic, realistic and blindly ambitious enough to get Alonso, who (despite failing to win a title since 2006) is still considered the most complete driver on the grid, in one of his cars. 

Alonso's resentment towards Dennis was reflected when rumours linking him to McLaren died out for a time when the latter's return to power was confirmed by the team in January.

Yet Ferrari's failure to use the 2014 regulations to their advantage and produce a front-running chassis and power unit package has left the Spaniard with no choice but to test the waters for a transfer once again.

This led to Alonso deploying a familiar tactic ahead of last month's Monaco Grand Prix, with the Ferrari driver responding to praise by Mercedes chief Dieter Zetsche by informing Mike Wise of Sky Sports:

It's always welcome when people see your job in a good way and respect what you try to do and what you try to achieve. Sometimes it's strange to see good comments and good compliments from people from outside and from the other side that are supposed to be close to you, there are the opposite comments.

It's motivating. It's motivating for me and it's good to receive good comments. But it's funny when you see the opposite in your closest friends.

His indirect criticism of Ferrari's attitude towards him carried parallels to when he accused Renault of making him, according to Crash.net at the time, feel "alone" as his title battle with Michael Schumacher reached its climax in 2006.

Less than a year later, he described how he had "never felt totally comfortable" at McLaren, as Kevin Garside of The Telegraph reported at the time. 

Alonso's words in Monaco forced Luca di Montezemolo, the Ferrari president, to issue a statement via the team's official website to praise his driver's efforts.

And it seemed to do the trick—perhaps partly due to the news of Nico Rosberg's contract extension with Mercedes making the front-running seats off-limits for 2015—with Alonso appearing much more positive about Ferrari's chances of future success whilst speaking to Sky Sports' Mike Wise in Canada.

But Ferrari's lacklustre performance in Montreal, which saw Alonso finish sixth and teammate Kimi Raikkonen finish 10th, having been unable to fight for victory after the dominant Mercedes cars suffered rare reliability problems, must surely have led to the Spaniard questioning his future once again.

Ferrari's lack of pace, promise and potential is forcing one of their greatest servants away, and a rival manufacturer could capitalise on the situation.

Honda powered the McLarens of Ayrton Senna which took pride of place, in the form of posters and photographs, on a young Alonso's wall and on his school equipment.

And the Japanese manufacturer, who will return to F1 as McLaren's power unit supplier from next season, are likely to be on the hunt for a marquee signing to lead their charge into a new era.

The recent claim of Eric Boullier, McLaren's racing director, to Pete Gill of Sky Sports that Jenson Button, who has strong links with both Japan and Honda, having driven for their Formula One team between 2006 and 2008, is likely to be retained for 2015 casts the position of Kevin Magnussen in doubt.

Although the logic of releasing a rookie driver within a year of handing him an opportunity to impress in Formula One would be questionable to say the least, McLaren—as their handling of Sergio Perez's departure from the team proved last season—care little for sentiment and loyalty when trophies are on the line.

Admittedly, Alonso might not fancy the idea of driving a McLaren under the stewardship of Ron Dennis—but the opportunity to emulate Senna by thrashing a McLaren-Honda around the streets of Monaco in 2015? The possibility of winning his third world championship in the same car-engine combination which Senna took each of his world titles?

It would be difficult to turn down.

It would be the realisation of a boyhood dream.

And let's face it—it would be better than wasting away in a stale, uncompetitive Ferrari.

For Alonso, a driver whose crash helmet has frequently featured graphics of playing cards, the gamble might just be worth taking.