Ferrari have always had more supporters. Even when McLaren and Williams were dominating. The same things as of now applied then. Ferrari is a special team with much history and hertiage. McLaren and Williams are just F1 teams. Williams are nice, I have a spot for them always, but they are not in the same calibur as Ferrari.
Not so sure about that here in the UK. During the Senna years, McLaren were everywhere, I don't really remember a great UK support for Ferrari until Mansell drove for them for a while... And that was more support for him and fell away once he left the team. When Williams started dominating for a few years, the UK fanbase was mostly for Williams. I remember as a lad we all loved the black and gold Lotus of Emerson Fitipaldi here. The much larger and more vocal Ferrari fanbase came about when Todt brought the team out of a 20 year slump in fortunes and got Brawn and Schumacher in.
I'm sure that Ferrari have always had a huge fanbase in Italy and perhaps some non racing nations, but I'll bet in the UK, and Germany with strong national racing teams they've not been as important as some others.
To be honest, claiming that Ferrari
IS F1 (Luca), or that they have more right to be there than
ANY other team (most Fezza fanboys) only makes me dislike the team more. EVERYONE has to start somewhere. Enzo had to build his first car... Bugatti, Ford, Spyker etc. were all building cars before he came on the scene. Does that make them even more important than Ferrari? Of course not. All teams old, middlin' and new are equal competitors in the sport. Start giving one team unecessary prominence and it's not an equal sport any more.
Williams and McLaren as well as a good few other teams all have a great history, and McLaren, RBR and Renault/Mercedes are definitely in the same class as Ferrari, (in fact you could say that in the last 15 years, Ferrari have pulled themselves back into the same class as McLaren and Williams) and long may that continue.