Ferrari and podium finishes have long been taken for granted, but history shows several seasons in which even top drivers came away empty-handed.
The first Ferrari year of seven-time Formula 1 world champion Lewis Hamilton was anything but ideal. Although Hamilton won the sprint race on his second race weekend in Shanghai, he never managed a top-three finish in the Grand Prix.
The most recent case is not long ago: Kimi Räikkönen failed to finish in the top three in 2014, with his best result being fourth place at the Belgian Grand Prix. But unlike 2025, the last year under expiring regulations, 2014 saw the premiere of new Formula 1 rules – and Ferrari got off to a much worse start than its competitors, especially Mercedes. Räikkönen’s Ferrari teammate at the time, Fernando Alonso, also struggled: he made it onto the podium, but only in two races. At the end of the season, this resulted in sixth place in the overall World Championship standings, with Räikkönen finishing 13th.
Something similar had already happened at Ferrari in 1980. After a dominant 1979 season with Jody Scheckter winning the world championship title and Gilles Villeneuve finishing second, the Ferrari 312T5 performed almost disastrously: Scheckter, the defending champion, only scored points once, and Villeneuve also missed out on the podium. But while Villeneuve continued, Scheckter threw in the towel in exasperation and quit. In contrast to this is the story of Wolfgang Graf Berghe von Trips: The German drove a consistent season for Ferrari in 1960 and scored points regularly, but there was no podium finish among his Grand Prix results.
Von Trips made up for this in 1961, winning two races, finishing second twice, and fighting for the title until the Italian Grand Prix, where a tragic accident took his life.