Alright, let’s break it down:

While unconfirmed, this “news” is coming out just weeks after Charles vocally defended his race engineer, Xavi, implying that much of the mistakes and miscommunication stemmed from the working conditions within the team, particularly in 2022. After the race in Baku (Ferrari’s most successful weekend in 2023 to date) Charles took the time to explicitly thank and praise Xavi over team radio. Earlier in the year, Charles mentioned in a Twitch stream that the people he trusts the most include his family, his personal trainer Andrea...and his race engineer, Xavi.

Now, the team made costly strategic mistakes and wrong tyre choices (often failing to take Charles’s feedback and preferences into consideration) last year while...well, attempting to stay in the championship fight.

Xavi is a face and a name everyone knows. For most people, especially with only a surface interest in a team’s inner workings, they will know the drivers, the team principal...and the race engineers. It’s incredibly easy to make someone like Xavi a scapegoat because he’s a tangible being you can point your finger at. Just look at how people get carried away nearly week in, week out, pinning the blame on Charles’s race engineer for everything from strategy to tyre choice, which do not fall under the umbrella of his responsibilities. As a race engineer, he’s the bridge between the pitwall and the driver. He’s being fed information regarding decisions made by those sitting on the pitwall, including the strategists. He is not the one making those decisions. Until we get a pitwall cam + radio channel specifically, we likely won’t know what the hell is going on over there.

Has Xavi made mistakes? Of course. I think every race engineer has, at some point, made mistakes or had a disagreement with their driver. Not saying everyone has to love the guy, but is there really no way to criticize someone without resorting to abuse and threats? I can’t help but note that a lot of that is often coming from those who balk when Charles is on the receiving end of similar treatment online. It’s not okay to cross a certain line when it comes to criticizing Charles, and it’s not okay to cross a certain line when it comes to criticizing Xavi, simple as. Not to mention there seems to be a lot of projecting going around and often Charles’s own feelings and perspective get invalidated because they don’t fit a certain accepted narrative.

Anyway, point being, it’s always easier to blame it all on the guy people know (and conveniently already have a negative opinion about) and throw him to the wolves rather than dig deeper and eliminate the root of the problem. And here’s where I hope Fred’s approach differs from Mattia’s.

Let’s be real, this team has had miscommunication and strategy issues pre-Xavi, currently has them, and very likely will continue to have these very same issues even if he’s gone, until something at the core of the team begins to change for the better.