Vettel will drive a Schumacher-era F2002 at Monza on sustainable fuel
The paint was the part everyone guessed. The programme is the part that matters
Ferrari released the full detail of its Schumacher tribute on Tuesday, and the livery turns out to be the least interesting thing in it. The team is putting three cars from Schumacher's Ferrari career on display at Monza, running one of them twice in front of the crowd, and feeding it a fuel that did not exist when the car was built. The whole programme is called Sunday Rituals.
Barrichello drives the F2002 on Saturday, Vettel on Sunday
Rubens Barrichello, Schumacher's team-mate through all five consecutive drivers' title seasons from 2000 to 2004, takes the F2002 out on Saturday afternoon. He has a claim on the car: he won the 2002 Italian Grand Prix in one. On Sunday, before the race starts, Sebastian Vettel drives the same car for a celebratory lap. Vettel grew up idolising Schumacher, then won four titles of his own and later drove for Ferrari himself, which makes him roughly the only person who could do that lap without it feeling like casting.
The F2002 runs on a Shell fuel derived from the 2026 Formula 1 blend
Ferrari's F1 Clienti department will run the car on an Advanced Sustainable Fuel that Shell developed specifically for it, drawing on the work behind the fuel the team races this season. That is possible because of how the 2026 Formula 1 fuel was specified: it has to come from non-food biomass, municipal waste or captured carbon, it must deliver at least 65 percent greenhouse gas savings under the EU Renewable Energy Directive, and crucially it is a drop-in fuel, meaning almost any combustion engine can burn it. A naturally aspirated V10 from 2002 counts as almost any engine, which is the same bet Ferrari is already making on biofuels for its road cars.
Three cars, three chapters: the F310, the F2002 and the 248 F1
The display covers the arc rather than the highlights. The 1996 F310 is where it started, the 2006 248 F1 is the car Schumacher retired from Ferrari in, and the F2002 sits in the middle as the peak. That season Ferrari won 15 of 17 races, Schumacher sealed the drivers' title in France in July with six rounds still to run, and the constructors' championship was settled in Hungary. Across his eleven years at Maranello he took 72 wins and 58 poles for the team, and those 72 stood as the record for victories with a single constructor until Lewis Hamilton reached 84 with Mercedes.
Schumacher's signature now sits on the SF-26's engine cover
The F310 tribute Ferrari teased last week is there in outline, but the detail released on Tuesday is new. The white that normally sits on the engine cover has gone, leaving red with white kept to the wings and black detailing. The race numbers switch to a retro typeface, and Schumacher's signature appears on the engine cover, between the numbers and title sponsor HP's logo. The nose carries the seven-star graphic from the helmet he wore in his final seasons, white on red. The BBS wheels take a hint of gold, recalling the magnesium rims of 1996, and both cars wear Schumacher's own logo, an M and an S arranged into the silhouette of a single-seater cockpit. Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton get bespoke helmets, overalls, gloves and boots, and the whole team switches to special kit on Sunday.
Leclerc and Hamilton spend Wednesday in Milan
The tribute leaves the circuit before the cars arrive. Both drivers are in Milan from Wednesday afternoon for partner events, including the Ferrari flagship store on via Giovanni Berchet, which is dressing its windows for Monza week with a Schumacher display and a run of exclusive items. Hamilton gets there having just added a Ferrari F40 to a garage he had emptied completely, which is its own kind of Maranello anniversary.
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Ferrari buried the significant part at the bottom of the release. A tribute livery lasts one weekend. A 2002 V10 running cleanly on a fuel developed from a 2026 Formula 1 blend is an answer to the question every owner of an historic Ferrari has been quietly asking, and it is the question underneath Ferrari's whole argument for keeping combustion engines alive. If the fuel is genuinely drop-in, then the F2002, the F310 and every car Ferrari has ever sold still have somewhere to go when the pumps change. That is worth more to Maranello than any paint scheme.
So the test is whether this survives Monday. One demonstration lap with a bespoke Shell blend is a press release; it costs Ferrari nothing to do once and photograph well. The real signal would be F1 Clienti and Corse Clienti offering the same fuel as standard at their own events, where customers run their own cars several times a year. Do that and Ferrari has turned a sustainability talking point into a service its collectors actually buy. Leave it at one lap in front of the tifosi and Sunday Rituals was exactly what its name suggests, a ceremony.
