Ferrari loves nothing more than a good bit of nostalgia, and at Monza next week it is going all in on Michael Schumacher. New race suits, a rumoured throwback livery, seven stars stitched onto the boots. It is a lovely gesture. It is also, conveniently, a distraction from the fact that Ferrari is currently getting beaten in this championship rather comprehensively.
The suits, then
Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc will wear specially designed race suits for the team’s home Italian Grand Prix, which takes place next week between 4 and 6 September. The design leans hard into Schumacher’s legacy, with seven stars on the back of each suit representing his seven world titles, and the German’s personal logo placed beneath the drivers’ race numbers on the waist. The same star motif has been carried over to the race boots.
Ferrari confirmed the reveal via social media, describing it simply as a legacy celebrated, unveiling suits inspired by Schumacher’s impact on the sport. It is subtle by Ferrari’s recent standards, more restrained than some of its previous Monza specials, but the intent is obvious enough.
Why now
The timing is not random. Next week’s race marks 30 years since Schumacher’s first victory for Ferrari back in 1996, and 20 years since his fifth Italian Grand Prix win with the team in 2006, the race after which he first announced his retirement from Formula 1. Schumacher won five of his seven world titles in red, driving for Ferrari between 2000 and 2004 in a run of dominance the sport has arguably never fully recovered from, depending on who you ask about the current Mercedes situation.
A livery reveal is expected to follow in the coming days, with reports suggesting Ferrari will echo the black accents and gold wheel rims of Schumacher’s 1996 car, his first season in red before the glory years actually arrived. A promotional clip already teased two cars side by side, one partially covered and unmistakably from 1996, the other this year’s machine.
Ferrari does this every year now, and it usually works
This is not new territory for Maranello. Ferrari has run a one-off Monza livery every season since 2022, and last year’s tribute honoured Niki Lauda with extra white worked into the classic scarlet. These campaigns tend to land well with fans and neutrals alike, because who doesn’t like a bit of history dusted off for the home crowd? The cynic in me would point out that a nostalgia trip costs nothing next to, say, fixing a strategy department that keeps making headlines for the wrong reasons.
Schumacher himself has not been seen publicly since the skiing accident that left him with severe head injuries, and the nature of his condition remains unknown. Whatever complicated feelings that reality stirs up, there is no doubting the scale of what he built at Ferrari: five consecutive titles, an organisation reshaped in his image, and a benchmark that Hamilton, tied with him on seven championships since 2020, has spent a career chasing and matching.
Meanwhile, the actual championship is not going Ferrari’s way
Here is the awkward context Ferrari would probably rather you focus on less. The Scuderia arrives at its home race sitting second in the constructors’ standings, but 87 points behind Mercedes, who have simply been in a different class this season. Hamilton sits third in the drivers’ championship, level on points with George Russell, with both men a hefty 59 points behind championship leader Kimi Antonelli. Leclerc trails his teammate by a further 28 points in fifth.
That is not a title fight. That is damage limitation dressed up in a nice suit, quite literally in this case. Ferrari’s strategy department has already had a torrid few weeks, and Hamilton’s own frustration with the team’s calls has spilled into public view more than once recently, hardly the ideal backdrop for a weekend supposedly about honouring greatness.
It would be unfair to say the Schumacher tribute is purely a PR smokescreen. Monza deserves a bit of theatre, and nobody embodies Ferrari’s golden era better than the man being celebrated. But there is something almost too neat about a team leaning on its most dominant chapter in history at precisely the moment its current campaign is drifting further from contention. For more on how the current title picture looks heading into Monza, our recent piece on McLaren’s own title ambitions makes for a useful comparison.
The verdict
Ferrari will roll out a beautiful tribute next week, the fans will love it, and for one weekend the red cars will look like something out of 2004. None of it will close an 87-point gap to Mercedes. Nostalgia sells shirts and warms hearts, but it has never once won a championship, and Ferrari of all teams should know that better than anyone.
