MONZA, Italy — Ferrari expected the Italian Grand Prix to go differently.Fans decked in the team’s iconic red and carrying its flags lined the streets and grandstands, pushing and cheering their team on. These grew louder each time a Ferrari left its garage and entered the pit lane before softening again, a call and response that echoed around the circuit.It’s always been this way. As former Formula 1 commentator Will Buxton once put it: “There are two religions in Italy: There’s the Catholic Church and there’s Ferrari.”Lewis Hamilton reinforced this on Thursday, saying in the Monza pre-event news conference, “To Italians, it’s the Pope and Ferrari, and pasta and pizza, and family.”Armed with an engine upgrade on their cars for this event, the Ferrari drivers entered the weekend with hopes of challenging for the win at an iconic race that means so much to their team. Charles Leclerc reckoned the engine would have “more power,” although he wasn’t sure how this would compare to Ferrari’s rivals.Both drivers agreed that strong execution of tactics and driving was needed, with Hamilton pointing out “for us to win this weekend, any weekend, it takes the whole collective to come together. It’s not just one thing. Everything has to flow from the beginning.”But when the moment requiring flawless teamwork arrived, it wasn’t there — again.A crash for Leclerc and a sixth-place finish for Hamilton, when Mercedes’ drivers shot clear and finished 1-2, was all Ferrari could muster when the pressure was turned up.The team left its home race with a harsh spotlight on its lack of decisive teamwork plans, in a year where it has challenged Mercedes for victories — Ferrari is second in the constructors’ championship — but not consistently.The Ferrari drivers, led by Charles Leclerc, head out to try tow tactics in Monza qualifying. (Anna Szilagyi / Pool / AFP / Getty Images)While outside chatter has been rising around the intra-team battle between Hamilton and Leclerc, the Ferrari drivers have been careful about not to make a fuss in public.At the previous race in Zandvoort last month, Ferrari didn’t issue team orders to swap its drivers at a critical late moment, where Leclerc was leading Hamilton but the Briton was faster on a different tire strategy.Instead, Ferrari called Leclerc into the pit, an instruction he initially ignored because he wasn’t convinced of the strategy’s merits. Hamilton expressed frustration over the radio as he lost time behind.The Briton felt it was the difference between a podium finish and the fourth place he ended up with. He toned down his initial radio frustrations in a subsequent Instagram post, where he said these did not convey “the best version of me.”“I take responsibility for that, and I’ll be better,” he added.But the narrative carried into Monza, as Ferrari’s teamwork came under the microscope due to its unexpectedly poor qualifying performance.All the teams needed tow tactics — where one car leads another to reduce drag and increase speed with a slipstream given to the chasing car — to get the quickest lap times because of Monza’s long straights. Positioning and timing in a line of cars is critical to best nail the tow effect.But Ferrari struggled to get it right, and Hamilton told reporters after qualifying, “the team was solely focused on trying to get an equal tow for Charles’s lap.”This centered on the order the Ferrari cars went out on track each time. Because of the team’s regular rotation of which driver is sent out first or second at every race — where better track conditions or the need for a tow could mean the driver with priority decides if they want to run ahead or behind their teammate — Leclerc was always towing Hamilton at Monza. Teams rotate priority between drivers across a season to try and ensure a fair split.But Leclerc still needed a tow from somewhere and it had to come from rival cars, which meant the two Ferraris couldn’t just choose when to head out, as the Mercedes drivers did across qualifying, with Kimi Antonelli solely focused on helping George Russell due to his engine-change grid penalty which left him starting from 19th.