Like McLaren, the team it was ultimately defeated by, Ferrari has come a long way over the past 18 months. But the Italian squad fell just short of conquering the 2024 constructors' title after keeping its chances alive until the very end.
Ferrari was the only team to prevent Red Bull from a clean sweep in 2023, with Carlos Sainz taking a cunning victory in Singapore. But the huge discrepancy between its one-lap and race day performance left the team unsure of where it would stack up in 2024 and how much it had solved its tyre overheating issues.
It was therefore a pleasant surprise when Ferrari appeared in the mix from the start of 2024, albeit behind Red Bull on pace. But little did the team know it wasn't Red Bull it should have been worried about, but McLaren, which started the season off the pace but made a huge step from May's Miami Grand Prix onwards.
McLaren soon overhauled Ferrari in the constructors', and while the Scuderia mounted a late fightback, four key moments ended up giving it too much work to do to catch up.
Canada: Ferrari's only double retirement
Ferrari suffered its first double retirement in two years with a horror weekend in Canada, in which a spate of issues derailed its weekend. Both Charles Leclerc and Sainz were dumped out of Q2 after they couldn't find late improvements on old soft tyres, with the pair starting from 11th and 12th.
Ferrari's weekend went from bad to worse in the race, with Leclerc retiring due to an electronical issue on the power unit while Sainz spun out in wet conditions, collecting Williams' Alex Albon. It prompted team boss Fred Vasseur to say Ferrari "had all the issues in the world" in Montreal.
Spain: Flawed new floor sends Ferrari down a development rabbit hole
Ferrari was keen to bounce back after Canada on the triple-header of Barcelona, Spielberg and Silverstone, but a new floor launched at the Spanish Grand Prix turned out to introduce bouncing in high-speed corners. That not only cost it performance outright but also derailed its development programme as the Maranello squad first had to find and understand the root cause before it could come up with a tweaked design.
The team was forced into back-to-back testing at Silverstone and into making set-up sacrifices to work its way out of its hole, ceding more and more ground to a McLaren team that was firing on all cylinders. A saving grace for Ferrari was Lando Norris' retirement in Austria after his collision with Max Verstappen. A first podium in five races, for Leclerc in Belgium, showed a glimpse that Ferrari was perhaps down but definitely not out. And later races would prove that Ferrari was successful in curing its ailments.
Baku: Sainz loses possible podium after late Perez clash
Following an emotional win for Leclerc in front of the tifosi at Monza, Azerbaijan further showed that while the jury was still out on whether Ferrari had cured its high-downforce problems, the Scuderia was still the team to beat on circuits where traction and top speed are king. Leclerc ceded the win to a faultless Oscar Piastri, while behind the pair Sainz looked on for a recovery onto the podium until a late clash with Sergio Perez, sending both cars into the wall. Those 15 points for third would have gone a long way, with the caveat that behind them Norris moved up to score four extra points too.
Singapore: Pre-race favourites on the back foot after qualifying
With Singapore the scene of Ferrari's only win in 2023, the traction demands and absence of fast corners were looking to favour the SF-24 as well as its predecessor. But while the Scuderia entered the weekend with a good shot to win, those hopes all but evaporated after a disappointing qualifying session in which Sainz crashed in Q3 and Leclerc also didn't set a time, with the pair relegated to the fifth row. On the tight streets of Singapore's Marina Bay circuit, overtaking was almost impossible but Leclerc and Sainz both delivered a strong race to limit the damage and finish fifth and seventh respectively, albeit miles behind McLaren's winner Norris.
The above setbacks, along with Sainz's crash in the wet in Brazil, ended up giving Ferrari too much work to do to overhaul McLaren despite the Scuderia's strong form in the title run-in. It was also held back in Las Vegas by a surprisingly dominant Mercedes team, a race after which it should have arguably led the world championship to have a more realistic chance, with McLaren superior in Qatar.
But setbacks for Norris in Qatar and Piastri in Abu Dhabi made the 2024 title race much tighter than anticipated. All it took was Sainz finding a way to snatch the race away from Norris, and Piastri not managing to grab a point in 10th, for Ferrari to triumph after all.
That will not mean much to Vasseur, who has often gone on record saying he hates 'ifs' and 'buts'. But beyond reeling over what could have been, Ferrari's season is one that should also be remembered for its positives, like its home win in Monza, Leclerc and Sainz's excellent final season together and the team managing to turn its form around after a mid-season development misstep.
“We are very happy with what we managed to do this year, with the improvements we made throughout the year and how we reacted to difficulties, but we came so close to winning the title that we are disappointed," Vasseur said on Sunday night.
"We had problems in Canada, then with the update presented in Spain, accidents in Singapore and Baku, but each time we came back stronger and that is a very good sign for the future."
