BUDAPEST, Hungary – On Sunday night, two different explanations for Ferrari’s poor results in Hungary came from the team. Driver Charles Leclerc blamed tactics, while team boss Mattia Binotto blamed the car’s performance.
Although the two statements are unrelated, the difference in messaging between the driver and the group’s boss is noticeable. Leclerc – person ranked sixth by checkered flags, far ahead of title competitor Max Verstappen by 80 points on the leaderboard – believe the race is winnable. Binotto is not.
Leclerc said in a post-race interview: “In terms of speed, we were strong and probably had the pace. “But yeah, in the end we didn’t and there are reasons for that.”
“What we lacked today is really speed and speed,” Binotto said in a press conference a few hours later. “I don’t think we can win today.”
Immediately after a race, it’s not uncommon for a driver to have a different perspective than their team’s. From the cockpit, it’s hard to see the bigger picture of a race in progress, but to the impartial observer, Leclerc’s version of events seems closer to how events unfold. out on the track.
That doesn’t mean Binotto was wrong. The car’s performance is clearly not as good as expected and that adds to the strategic missteps. But what has become clear is that Ferrari’s ability to perform on the track is not good enough to challenge such a special driver and team combination as Red Bull and Verstappen, and that point was captured by the performance. performed on Sunday.
How Ferrari turns the tide is the biggest question. It’s a car and driving package that has shown high title-winning performance this year, but all too often mistakes – both from the hatch wall and the cockpit – have deflected its chances of winning. .
On Sunday night, with any hopes of a successful title campaign hanging by the thread, Ferrari looked divided and defeated.
What happened to Leclerc?
In the first half of the race, Leclerc seemed to be in command. After starting the race from third on the grid on medium-mix tires, he took the lead over teammate Carlos Sainz on the first pit stop and then used the Ferrari’s superior performance to take the lead. take the lead from Mercedes’ George Russell. round 31.
But during the first part of the race, there was a threat emerging from behind. Verstappen started in tenth place and is driving brilliantly and clinically to move up the order. His tire strategy is in contrast to Leclerc’s, which started the race on soft tires and switched to medium on the first stop, while Ferrari started with medium vehicles and fitted a set of vehicles. another for the second leg of Leclerc.
F1 rules dictate that drivers must use at least two different tire compounds throughout the race, meaning Leclerc has a favorable average tire break on his next stop while Verstappen can use it. reuse it to go to the checkered flag.
A third option – hard tires – was available to both riders but proved difficult to warm up, especially in the relatively cool temperatures on Sunday. Even during Friday’s practice, when the track temperature was well above 20 degrees Celsius, the hard-tied teams found they were lacking in performance. However, it is said that Ferrari is not one of them, choosing to complete all three hours of practice on medium or soft mixed tyres.
Even without checking the tires on Friday, there were warning signs that the hard compound wouldn’t work on race day. Red Bull strategists initially planned to start the race on hard tires in pursuit of a one-stop strategy, but there was a last-minute change as both drivers reported difficulties lifting the heat. degrees above the grid entry, which means that the harder compound will be even more complex to work with.
As the race began, Kevin Magnussen made an early pit stop to repair the front wings and use hard tyres, but clearly struggled to get the mark from them. Alpine, too, which ran ahead of the Red Bulls at the start of the race, dropped the order downhill as they fitted hard compound into a one-stop strategy.
Analysis of Friday’s practice or the cars’ relative performance in the first half of the race shows that hard tires are not a good choice, unless you want to run a one-stop race. However, when it came to Leclerc’s second stop, Ferrari opted for hard compound.
That was not the original plan. Leclerc was supposed to move on to much more advanced much later in the race, as Lewis Hamilton did with great success, but Ferrari’s wall scuttled that plan when Verstappen pitted him relatively early for points. his last stop. It looked like Red Bull was trying to lure Ferrari into an early pit stop, but even they were taken by surprise when the Italian team took the bait.
“I felt Ferrari had a very different strategy at the time,” said Red Bull team boss Christian Horner after the race. “They obviously made their way to the bank track position, but as soon as they pitted Charles and put on a set of hard tyres, it looked like they could have won today.
“I think the temperature can affect them quite a bit, but they’ve tucked themselves into a strategic corner and that opened things up for us.”
Within two laps of Leclerc’s pit stop, Verstappen overtook him to take the lead. The Red Bull driver then turned around, yielding to Ferrari, but had no problem returning to position a few laps later.
Turns out, much of the credit goes to Verstappen for making the strategy work. Horner listed this performance among the best of his driver career.
“I think it’s right up there,” he said. “In the beginning, it was the first time I saw him being cautious, because he was a little pinched in the middle of the herd there, but after that the speed and the way he managed was phenomenal.”
Why did Ferrari choose hard tires?
The Ferrari’s performance on hard tires was so bad that the team had to stop for the third 15 laps later to get Leclerc as high as originally planned. The move, in and of itself, was in doubt, leaving Leclerc sixth in the finish line.
After the race, Leclerc believes the switch to hard tires is the cause of the results.
“I think the pace today was very good, on average, on a hard tire, it was really good,” he said. “But then it became clear that we lost all the pace.
“So we stopped more than everyone took 20 seconds plus the laps were so hard that we lost a second each lap. So this is a lot of racing time.”
Binotto defends this strategy, saying that the team’s modeling of how hard tires perform shows it will match or exceed average tire performance after 11 warm-ups. The reality that didn’t happen, he said, was due to an unexpected loss of car performance from Friday practice to Sunday’s race.
“Before we start with why we use hard tyres, I think it’s important to say that we believe today’s car has underperformed and we’re not up to speed. The level was as expected looking back on Friday and the race. today,” he said. “So today were definitely different conditions and they were cooler, but overall today’s speeds weren’t great enough and regardless of the tires we’re using, I don’t think we’re as good as we expected. .
“And certainly the same goes for hard tires, so when we put on hard tyres, our simulation is it’s going to be a couple of tough warm-ups, they’re going to be slower than the average vehicle in 10 or 11 laps but then they’ll come back at the end of time – and that’s a 30 lap period.
“So we had hard tires on at the time because it was 30 laps and we were trying to secure a position on the Max and it would certainly be soft tires for too long. Our choice. and our analysis is, yeah, it’s going to be tough at the beginning of the period but it’ll come back at the end.
“Overall, the tires don’t work. I know they don’t do well on other cars, but I think the analysis we do is based on the data we have, and I think, like I said before. , the main reason is not considering the strategy but why the car is not as good as we expected today.”
Binotto backs up his argument by saying that Sainz, who stuck with the original soft-medium strategy, also struggled and placed fourth after starting second on the grid. Sainz himself agrees that the car’s performance is down to strategy.
“If I had guided myself to the tempo of Friday, it should have been easy 1-2,” Sainz said. “Today it was an all round fight. There was no balance in the car.
“I think we lacked pace and I don’t think we made that many mistakes either. I think when you lack speed like Red Bull did in Austria, nobody says ‘Red Bull has got it.’ Can I keep making these mistakes? “No. I think we had a really bad pace today.”
Binotto compared Sainz’s race to Hamilton’s, pointing out that the Mercedes started seventh and finished second while Sainz started second and finished fourth with the same strategy.
“This is the first time this year that the car is not as competitive as we usually look for, and this also happened with Carlos because he had the same strategy as Lewis and started ahead but came back. behind, and Lewis finished second,” he said.
“So the car didn’t perform well today. And when the car didn’t, it didn’t make the tires work as they should and certainly not the hard tyres.”
That argument ignores the fact that Sainz stopped his last pit four laps earlier than Hamilton, which Mercedes believes made the difference in the two drivers’ differing fortunes at the end of the race. Still, Binotto was clear: the disastrous Hungarian Grand Prix result was more due to an unexpected lack of performance than any other factor.
“What we lacked today is really speed and speed,” he said. “I don’t think we can win today.
“And the reason I don’t know, because it was the first time in the first 13 races that we didn’t have the speed somehow to win.
“You need to look at that performance wise first to understand, and I’m pretty sure when we understand that we’ll understand why the tires aren’t performing properly.”
What happens next?
As with any failure in F1, Ferrari will go and analyze in detail what happened. Undoubtedly, the lack of speed on hard tires is certainly significant but the big question is how did Ferrari model the car’s performance so wrong, especially when other teams clearly struggling in the race before being fitted to Leclerc’s car.
Binotto insists there will be no knee change as a result of the Hungarian Grand Prix and remains confident his team can make a comeback by returning to the top of the podium at the Belgian Grand Prix after the summer break.
“It’s not a matter of luck and nothing has to be changed,” he said. “I think it’s always about learning, experimenting and building skills.
“There’s definitely something we need to look at today to understand why. But if I look back at the balance of the first half of the season there’s no reason for us to change. I simply think we need to work out what’s wrong today, which means understand and then resolve to get back to being as competitive as we’ve been in 12 races so far. I shouldn’t [competitive again] At the next time [race]. “
