Although the end result was overweight and ill-handling, it was all a step in the right direction after the woes of 1980. Notably, Villeneuve won twice: at Monaco and famously at Jarama (despite holding up most of the field), the two tracks where power was not meant to have an advantage. With more work, the 126C2 in 1982 was meant to be the real championship challenger, and not only was it so, but in all fairness either Villeneuve or Pironi should have walked off with the 1982 crown.

1989 was another year which Ferrari virtually gave up in looking towards the future. Having seen McLaren obliterate the opposition in 1988, Ferrari decided to do what Lotus did with ground-effects, and come up with an innovation that would leave others in their wake. Their solution was the semi-automatic gearbox, and just like ground-effects it succeeded in revolutionising F1 indeed, although it never gave Ferrari the decided advantage intended.

The final year to class in this category is 1996, the first year of the Todt-Schumacher partnership, a year which was meant to serve as a getting-to-know-you period in which Ferrari would virtually give Schumacher any old car to drive whilst finding out exactly what the German wanted, using that as a platform to build a 1997 championship challenge. In which case, some have asked why Ferrari went ahead and built the F310 instead of giving Schumacher a revised 1995 412T2 to wring the neck of. The rather embarrassing early exits for both cars in France and Britain gave some credence to that sentiment.

Next: From Left Field and Beyond