Book Review: 'Forza Ferrari: How F1's Most Famous Team Can Win Again'
When it comes to Formula 1-themed book forewords, it might be difficult to find a better scene-setter than the opener offered up by former Ferrari chairman Luca di Montezemolo.
"Ferrari has been, after my family, the most important thing in my life. The sport of Formula 1 would not be the same without Ferrari—that is as true today as it ever was."$24.00 at amazon.com
At least he didn't forget to mention his family.
Ferrari fans are a rare breed in sports. If you don't believe that now, you will after reading the book Forza Ferrari: How F1's Most Famous Team Can Win Again.
This 262-page opus takes an inside look at the Ferrari race team, past and present, with highlights on mistakes made and hopes dashed in recent years leading up to what the team hopes will be a return to glory in 2025.
It's a cry of hope that another Michael Schumacher era is right around the next corner for new driver pairing Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton. More to the point, the book is author and veteran F1 scribe Nate Saunders' road map to the top rung of the F1 ladder.
Schumacher won five of his seven Formula 1 titles with Ferrari, and the book traces the champion's journey, as well as the successful (and unsuccessful) attempts by Ferrari drivers since to capture their own glory days in red.
It's not an easy journey, but it's one that this book published by Aurum Press in London says will happen again.
You won't get any arguments from di Montezemolo.
"Like all tifosi in Italy and around the world, I feel sure one of these two great drivers is the one who can end the long wait for another Ferrari driver's name to be on the World Championship trophy," di Montezemolo offers.
"I know it is a question of when, not if, and when is very, very soon indeed."
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
6 hours ago
- Yahoo
Max Verstappen ‘not too worried' about the state of play at Red Bull
Since 2021 Max Verstappen has been the dominant individual force on the Formula 1 grid. The Red Bull driver secured his first Drivers' Championship that year in a dramatic duel with Lewis Hamilton that not only went down to the final laps of the season, but remains a flash point among fans to this day. Verstappen went on to secure championships in 2022, 2023, and even last year when McLaren's MCL38 was the superior package on the grid. This year, however, Verstappen's string of titles likely comes to an end. He arrived at the Summer Shutdown with 187 points, putting him 88 points behind second-place Lando Norris, and 97 points behind leader Oscar Piastri. And with the McLaren duo swapping wins in recent weeks — Norris and Piastri rattled off four consecutive one-two finishes for the Woking-based outfit leading up to the break — Verstappen's already-slim title hopes grew slimmer. But to hear the driver tell it, he is 'not too worried' about his championship chances. In an interview with Lawrence Barretto published on the official F1 website (a free subscription is required), Verstappen opened up about the state of play at Red Bull in 2025, and his future in the sport. 'You also just have to accept where you're at,' said Verstappen of his and the team's current position, which finds Red Bull fourth in the Constructors' Championship standings and on their second Team Principal of the season. 'Yeah, we are not the quickest at the moment, but we're also not the slowest. 'We always want to be better, and actually that was the same when we were winning. Now we're not winning that much. 'We just try to focus on understanding the car a bit better, where we can find our time, because of course next year there's new regulations, but I think there's still a lot to learn also this year.' Of note is the fact that Red Bull parted ways with Christian Horner, the only Team Principal in their history, promoting Laurent Mekies into that role following the British Grand Prix. That move, coupled with a pair of openings at Mercedes next year, prompted weeks of speculation that Verstappen was considering a shocking move to the Silver Arrows. Verstappen eventually put those rumors to rest before the break, and he told Barretto that he is focused on what Verstappen calls his Red Bull family. 'It's been great being part of a team for so long,' he said. 'It definitely is like a second family. We have achieved so many beautiful things, including of course winning championships together.' Regarding those rumors, Verstappen reiterated that he is focused on the future with Red Bull. 'Well, the thing is that there's always other people speaking a lot, while I'm not really talking, because first of all I don't need to, I don't need to say anything,' said Verstappen. 'I think that's also better for everyone, instead of just waffling things around. It makes no sense anyway, it's a bit of a waste of time, but for me I'm very focused on '26 with the team, to look ahead and make sure that we nail the regulations, and that we are competitive from the start.' The driver also believes that Red Bull can bounce back after this season. 'The team has gone from of course winning championships before I arrived, to when I arrived, a bit through a rebuilding phase, and then we really hit the peak again of winning championships,' he said to Barretto. 'Now I feel like [it is a] slight rebuilding [season]. We're still of course a very strong team, but I do think that to make again a step up, there's slight rebuilding or restructuring maybe, and understanding a little bit more what's going on, and that of course takes a little bit of time, but hopefully not too much time. 'I think that's also a bit the mentality of the team [to fight back from a dip], it's always been like that, so I'm not too worried about that.' F1 returns to action at the end of this month with the Dutch Grand Prix.
Yahoo
8 hours ago
- Yahoo
F1's 6 biggest winners of the 2025 season so far
The 2025 Formula 1 season has reached the Summer Shutdown. Making it a perfect time to pause, and declare some early winners and losers. Today we'll look at six winners from the first half of the season, a collection of teams, drivers and yes, a toy company, that stole the show over the first 14 race weekends. McLaren 2024 was a dream season for McLaren, as they rocketed up the standings over the second half of the schedule to capture their first Constructors' title since 1998. The alarm clock has yet to go off to wake Team Papaya up from that dream. McLaren entered the 2025 season as the favorites to repeat as Constructors' Champions, and they have lived up to those expectations. Lando Norris' win in the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, coupled with a hard-fought points finish from Oscar Piastri after the hometown hero found the grass in wet conditions, was enough to see McLaren leave Melbourne level with Mercedes atop the standings, but with a tiebreaker advantage thanks to Norris' win. Since then, they have not looked back, recording a combined 11 Grand Prix wins between Piastri and Norris (including Norris' win in Melbourne) and 24 combined Grand Prix podiums, roaring into the break with four consecutive one-two finishes. That brought their total number of front-row lockouts to seven on the season, their highest mark since Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna recorded that many in 1988. After 14 race weekends their lead over second-place Ferrari is 299 points, on par with the 310-point advantage Red Bull enjoyed over Mercedes after 14 races in their dominant 2023 campaign. Add to all this the fact that Piastri and Norris have likely turned the fight for the Drivers' Championship into a two-man race, and you have a season to remember in the works at Woking. Oscar Piastri Oscar Piastri's form has taken a significant leap forward, putting him atop the Drivers' Championship standings at the Summer Shutdown. After winning a pair of grands prix last season, Piastri secured six wins over the first 14 races, bringing his points total to 284, just eight short of his 2024 mark. He enters the break with a nine-point lead over teammate Lando Norris in the title race, giving him a slight advantage in the title chase. There is a long way to go until a champion is crowned, but the Oscar Piastri we saw over the first half of the season can certainly lift the big trophy by the end of the season. Lando Norris Lando Norris entered the 2025 season as the odds-on favorite to win the F1 Drivers' Championship after falling short of Max Verstappen a season ago, and his win in Melbourne certainly got his title chase off to a roaring start. While it has been more of an up-and-down campaign when contrasted with what his teammate has done — including a difficult moment in Montreal when he clashed with Piastri in the closing laps of the Canadian Grand Prix — Norris is still just nine points behind his teammate as the second half looms. He also secured two major wins, taking the Monaco Grand Prix and then winning his home race at Silverstone, among the five Grand Prix victories over the first 14 race weekends on his 2025 resume. Can he catch Piastri? Certainly. Will he? We'll find out over the second half of the season. LEGO Let's have some fun for a moment. Although not nearly as much fun as the grid had in the buildup to the Miami Grand Prix. The drivers' parade looked a little different as the grid wound around Hard Rock Stadium in May, as the 20 drivers climbed into life-sized LEGO F1 cars for a lap unlike any other. If you had any doubt over how much the drivers themselves loved this event, just watch the onboard cameras and see how veterans, including Fernando Alonso, Max Verstappen, and Lewis Hamilton, turned into kids again. It's 15 minutes of pure joy. And an epic win from the first half of the season. Sauber 2024 was a difficult season for the team at Sauber. The year began with struggles in pit lane — exemplified by a 52-second pit stop for Valtteri Bottas at the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix as the team dealt with a wheel nut issue — and they did not secure their first points until the Qatar Grand Prix, where Zhou Guanyu finished eighth to bank four points for the team. The only four they scored all season. This year began with a new driver lineup (veteran Nico Hülkenberg and rookie Gabriel Bortoleto), and the turnaround has been dramatic. Sauber sits seventh in the standings with 51 points, just one point behind sixth-place Aston Martin and 29 points behind fifth-place Williams, putting them squarely in the midfield fight. A big chunk of those points came from Hülkenberg's third-place finish at the British Grand Prix, a result that marked the veteran's first podium result in his 239th start in F1. But also notable is what Bortoleto has done in recent weeks, as the rookie finished eighth in the Austrian Grand Prix, ninth in the Belgian Grand Prix, and a career-best sixth in the Hungarian Grand Prix, all three results coming in the four most recent races. Sauber brought a significant upgrade package to the Spanish Grand Prix (where Hülkenberg finished fifth), and that package has given the team momentum heading into the second half of the season, and a chance to finish as high as fifth depending on results. They also have the wind at their backs heading into 2026, when they become the Audi works operation. Williams After taking a step forward in 2023 when they finished seventh in the Constructors' Championship standings, Williams came back to Earth a bit in 2024. Logan Sargeant was dropped by the team following the Dutch Grand Prix and replaced by Franco Colapinto, who showed flashes over his first four starts — including an eighth-place finish in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix — but stumbled down the stretch. Even with a solid season from Alexander Albon, Williams limped to a ninth-place finish. But James Vowles scored perhaps the biggest win of the driver transfer market (putting Lewis Hamilton's move to Ferrari aside) when he inked Carlos Sainz Jr. to a new contract. At the moment, Williams sits fifth in the standings with 70 points, buoyed by 54 from Albon alone, a mark that has put him back into the conversation regarding a potential move to another team. However, Albon insists that his future lies at Williams, as he told RacingNews365 in a recent interview. 'I want to see the fruits of where we get to. I feel like we made it. When I look at us compared to other teams, maybe you can remove or add McLaren, but McLaren have had the consistency, and they've had their sparks throughout the years,' began Albon. 'When I look at Williams and look at the trajectory that we've been on, I don't think there's another team that have just gone year on year, just this consecutive steep climb. 'And I feel like, rightly or wrongly, I've been a part of that process, and I want to see us go the whole way.' Holding onto fifth in the Constructors' Championship race would be a huge step in that process.


Newsweek
17 hours ago
- Newsweek
Lewis Hamilton's Former Mercedes Teammate Offers Crucial Advice to Ferrari
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. The Scuderia Ferrari Formula One team has been enduring a challenging 2025 season thus far, and Lewis Hamilton's former Mercedes teammate, Nico Rosberg, has asked the team to listen to the seven-time world champion. This comes after Hamilton sent documents to Ferrari to elevate the team's competitiveness at all levels. Hamilton's debut season with the Maranello-based team has been a bumpy ride thus far, with most challenges surrounding the SF-25 F1 car. To enhance the car's performance and ensure no elements are carried forward to the 2026 car, the Briton has sent several documents detailing his feedback and suggestions. Hamilton revealed ahead of the race at Spa-Francorchamps that he also held meetings with the top-level management and engineers to ensure the entire team remains on the same page. Beyond just the car, he also advised Ferrari on making "structural" adjustments to the team. The 40-year-old driver arrived at Ferrari with the most impressive driver resume a team could have asked for, and his knowledge about what goes into becoming a championship-winning team could be extremely crucial for Ferrari. Here's what Hamilton said about the changes: Lewis Hamilton of Great Britain and Scuderia Ferrari prepares to drive in the garage prior to practice ahead of the F1 Grand Prix of Australia at Albert Park Grand Prix Circuit on March 14, 2025... Lewis Hamilton of Great Britain and Scuderia Ferrari prepares to drive in the garage prior to practice ahead of the F1 Grand Prix of Australia at Albert Park Grand Prix Circuit on March 14, 2025 in Melbourne, Australia. More"Yeah, I was at the factory for two weeks, a couple of days each week. We did preparation — naturally, going over where we were in the previous race, things that we need to change. I held a lot of meetings, so I've called on lots of meetings with the heads of the team. "I've sat with John [Elkann], Benedetto [Vigna], and Fred [Vasseur] in several meetings. I've sat with the head of car development, with Loic [Serra] and also the heads of different departments — talking about the engine for next year, front suspension for next year, rear suspension for next year, things that you want, issues that I have with this car. "I've sent documents, as I've done throughout the year. After the first few races, I did a full document for the team. Then, during this break, I had another two documents that I sent in. So, then I come in and want to address those. "Some of it's structural adjustments that we need to make as a team in order to get better in all the areas we want to improve. And the other one was really about the car — the current issues that I have with this car. Some things you do want to take on to next year's car, and some that you need to work on changing for next year. "We did development for — tried the 2026 car for the first time and started work on that. Thirty engineers come into the room, and you sit and debrief with every single one of them. So, big, big push. And otherwise just training — maybe a little bit too hard, a bit heavy this weekend." Given Hamilton's knowledge and premier class racing experience, former F1 champion Rosberg has asked Ferrari to take Hamilton's input seriously. He said: "He's a seven-time World Champion, so you definitely have to listen to what a seven-time World Champion is telling you. But it also takes time. Many of the things they cannot just change overnight. If the brakes are an issue, it's a long lead time to develop the new brake system. Or if he's not happy with the balance, it's a really long process. "So in many senses, he will be even thinking about next year already now as well, with some of the things that he's talking about. I think it's a good sign, though, that we're hearing that Lewis is pushing, you know. He's not like resign, giving up, but he's really pushing hard, the team, the owners, the team boss. That's a great sign."