Sebastian Vettel's season started with a bang as the German flew to consecutive victories in the season openers.
It calmed down the growing fears that Formula One was becoming a one-horse race as Mercedes spent the 2017 season continuing their dominance over the field.
Since those opening races, however, things have slowed down for Vettel and Ferrari.
That was perhaps no more evident than at the Spanish Grand Prix where Vettel fell from the podium after a qualifying position of third to finish fourth - although Ferrari themselves took the brunt of the blame from fans.
Vettel was pitted twice by Ferrari despite his rivals only taking one, costing the German a chance of catching Hamilton and, eventually, a place on the podium.
Vettel claimed after the race that there was no choice but to pit for a second time, although that didn't stop fans believing it was very poor strategy.
Ferrari and Vettel clearly felt the consequences of the decision - but so did Mercedes, who capitalised to take both first and second place.
But Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff says he "fully understands" his rivals' decision.
"It's always a very difficult call to make," Wolff explained. "We had it in the past, Shanghai was trading track position versus fresh tyres.
"And we debated it today again and based on the experience we made of struggling to overtake Max, for us it was clear that track position was more important.
"Ferrari did the opposite. You saw that it worked out for [Daniel] Ricciardo and Verstappen in Shanghai, I think this is what they were thinking.
"Always very difficult calls to make. I fully understand why they did it."
That will certainly be nice for Ferrari to hear, considering the criticism that followed the decision.
Vettel will be desperate to get back to winning ways after finishes of 8th, 4th, and 4th in his last three races have seen him drop to 17 points behind Lewis Hamilton in the leaderboard.
And he'll be eagerly anticipating the chance the do just that later this month - what better place than Monaco?