{"id":113723,"date":"2025-09-04T10:20:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T10:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/113723\/"},"modified":"2025-09-04T10:20:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T10:20:09","slug":"jacques-villeneuve-pours-cold-water-on-ferraris-monza-hopes-wont-cut-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/113723\/","title":{"rendered":"Jacques Villeneuve pours cold water on Ferrari\u2019s Monza hopes: \u201cWon\u2019t cut it\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As <a href=\"https:\/\/www.motorsport.com\/team\/ferrari\/3\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Ferrari<\/a> readies itself for its most important race of the year, 1997 Formula 1 world champion Jacques Villeneuve has poured cold water on its Italian Grand Prix hopes as it longs to perform in front of the Tifosi. With a damning assessment of its performance ahead of Monza, the former driver believes its usual home advantage won&#8217;t be enough this weekend.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking on The F1 Show podcast by Sky Sports F1,\u00a0Villeneuve discussed the Scuderia&#8217;s chances.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Normally they have a special engine, special car, but I don&#8217;t expect that this year. They are way off. The car is not working.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This comes after Ferrari endured a disastrous Dutch Grand Prix, which began with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.motorsport.com\/driver\/lewis-hamilton\/1278\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Lewis Hamilton<\/a> crashing out of the race after qualifying within a tenth of his team-mate <a href=\"https:\/\/www.motorsport.com\/driver\/charles-leclerc\/109611\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Charles Leclerc<\/a>. His car lost traction on the wet paint of Zandvoort&#8217;s famously banked Turn 3, and while he managed the resulting slide, there was nothing he could do to avoid the barriers on the corner exit.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>If that wasn&#8217;t enough, Leclerc was later hit by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.motorsport.com\/team\/mercedes\/5\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Mercedes<\/a> rookie Kimi Antonelli as he lunged for an overtake on\u00a0Hugenholtz, ending his race prematurely on lap 40.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>   <img decoding=\"async\" draggable=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/ferrari-sf-25-italian-gp-liver.jpg\" alt=\"Ferrari SF-25 Italian GP livery  \" width=\"1200\" height=\"800\" loading=\"lazy\"\/> <\/p>\n<p class=\"title\">Ferrari SF-25 Italian GP livery<\/p>\n<p class=\"photographer\">Photo by: Ferrari<\/p>\n<p>This has simply continued a challenging season for the Italian outfit. While Ferrari sits second in the constructors&#8217; standings behind the dominant McLaren, the team&#8217;s performance has been visibly laboured, leading Villeneuve to further criticise the squad.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Normally the car is kind of working. It&#8217;s in the battle and then they get a little extra for Monza. A little extra won&#8217;t cut it right now.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But it&#8217;s Leclerc who received the majority of the now-pundit&#8217;s focus.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Charles is frustrated because he&#8217;s probably starting to understand that he will never be world champion. It&#8217;s gone bad, it&#8217;s gotten worse. Next year is a whole new set of regulations and normally that&#8217;s not when Ferrari is at its best, so it&#8217;s a difficult situation for him.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s been there for a long time and his star has fallen a little bit. At least Lewis can rely on the fact that he&#8217;s a multiple world champion so it doesn&#8217;t matter if the star falls a little bit. He will always be that big global star anyway, that goes beyond F1.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They might finish second in the constructors&#8217; championship, but they actually are the fourth horse. They are simply lucky that in Red Bull, there&#8217;s only one driver scoring points and the same thing with Mercedes.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Few races matter to Ferrari as much as Monza. At its home race in front of a passionate Italian fanbase, the team must perform. While its Niki Lauda livery is a beautiful tribute to the Scuderia&#8217;s heritage, it won&#8217;t be enough by itself.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In this article<\/p>\n<p>Be the first to know and subscribe for real-time news email updates on these topics<\/p>\n<p>    Subscribe to news alerts<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As Ferrari readies itself for its most important race of the year, 1997 Formula 1 world champion Jacques&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":113724,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[1687,53953,831,372,6537,30248,54819,832,6540,101,6541,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-113723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-f1","tag-f1","tag-f1-italian-grand-prix-2025","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-italian-gp","tag-jacques-villeneuve-pours-cold-water-on-ferrariu2019s-monza-hopes-u201cwonu2019t-cut-itu201d","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-nosyndicate","tag-sports","tag-trendingteam","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113723\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}