Sebastian Vettel is getting back into a Ferrari this weekend, though don’t get too excited: it’s a lap of honour, not a comeback. The four-time champion will climb into Michael Schumacher’s old F2002 at Monza, and the timing tells you everything about where Ferrari’s priorities sit right now.
Ferrari has confirmed that Vettel will take the iconic car for a ceremonial lap ahead of Sunday’s race at Monza, part of a weekend built entirely around celebrating Schumacher’s decade in red. It’s a lovely piece of theatre. It’s also a fairly pointed reminder that Ferrari’s glory days involve cars from thirty years ago, not the one currently struggling to close a 59-point gap in this year’s championship.
Why Vettel, and Why This Car
Vettel spent six years at Ferrari, winning 14 grands prix for the Scuderia, a tally bettered only by Schumacher and Niki Lauda in the team’s history. He grew up idolising Schumacher before eventually inheriting his red overalls, so handing him the keys to the F2002 isn’t just sentimental scheduling, it’s about as neat a bit of symbolism as Ferrari could have arranged.
Rubens Barrichello gets first crack at the car on Saturday. He was Schumacher’s team-mate through the run of titles from 2000 to 2004, and he actually won at Monza in 2002 in this very chassis, so his lap carries a bit more competitive weight than Vettel’s. Vettel takes over on Sunday, driving the F2002 shortly before the grand prix itself gets underway.
The Fuel Angle Nobody Asked For
Ferrari has been careful to point out that the F2002 won’t just be a museum piece dragged out for nostalgia purposes. The team says the car will run on what it calls an advanced sustainable fuel developed specifically by Shell, built using knowledge gathered from this year’s fuel programme. Make of that what you will, it’s the sort of detail that lets Ferrari tick a sustainability box while everyone in the grandstands is actually there to hear a V10 scream around Monza.
Schumacher’s Ferrari Era, on Full Display
The whole weekend is being built around Schumacher’s legacy, and Ferrari isn’t doing it quietly. The team has already revealed a throwback livery for the Italian Grand Prix, with Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc racing in colours and race suits that nod back to Schumacher’s dominant years in red.
Beyond the F2002, two more cars from Schumacher’s Ferrari career will be on static display throughout the weekend at Monza: the 1996 F310, the car he drove in his first season with the team, and the 2006 248 F1, the machine he raced in his final year before stepping away. Between the F310 marking the beginning and the 248 F1 marking the end, Ferrari has essentially built a rolling museum exhibit of one driver’s entire career at Maranello, parked at the one circuit where Italian fans will show up in numbers to see it.
A Tribute That Doubles as a Contrast
There’s something almost cruel about the timing, even if nobody at Ferrari would ever admit it. Schumacher’s era delivered dominance on a scale this current Ferrari squad can only dream about. The team now sits second in the constructors’ standings behind Mercedes, with Hamilton and Leclerc both stuck 59 points and 87 points respectively adrift of championship leader Kimi Antonelli with 11 races still to run this season. Rolling out three cars from a genuinely golden period only sharpens the comparison with a team that’s currently good, not great.
Ferrari has leaned hard into nostalgia before, and it tends to work: Monza’s crowd is famously partisan, and there’s no faster way to get 100,000 people cheering than putting a Schumacher-era Ferrari back on track with someone who actually knew the man behind the wheel. Vettel’s connection to Schumacher is well documented, and having him take that lap adds a layer of sincerity that a corporate PR stunt usually lacks.
But sincerity doesn’t win championships, and Ferrari fans watching Vettel take a ceremonial lap on Sunday will do so knowing their actual title challenge realistically ended some races ago. Calls for Ferrari to fully back Hamilton over Leclerc have grown louder as the gap to the front has stretched, and no amount of throwback livery changes that arithmetic.
One Weekend, Two Very Different Ferraris
What Monza will actually deliver is a strange split screen: one Ferrari from the past that won almost everything in sight, and one Ferrari in the present that currently sits second in the constructors’ standings. Vettel’s lap will be genuinely moving for anyone who remembers what he meant to that era and what Schumacher built before him. It just won’t do a thing to close the gap at the top of the standings, and Ferrari knows that better than anyone.
The team gets its emotional moment this weekend, and Monza’s tifosi will get their fix of nostalgia. Whether that goodwill translates into anything on the timing sheets come Sunday afternoon is an entirely separate question, and Ferrari’s current form suggests the answer is no.
