Photo by Mark Thompson/Getty Images
Another blunder-filled weekend for Ferrari
The 2023 Formula 1 season has developed a certain cadence to each race week.
A handful of teams will shine during practice, leading to hopes that someone will finally challenge Max Verstappen and Red Bull at the front. A surprise or two during qualifying bolsters that hope, but then Verstappen drives away from the field yet again during the grand prix itself to yet another win.
And along the way, there is a mistake or two from Ferrari.
Entering the Hungarian Grand Prix we asked if anything had really changed at the Scuderia this season, after a mistake-riddled 2022 campaign that ended with former Team Principal Mattia Binotto out, and new Team Principal Frederic Vasseur in.
With that week behind us, that same question remains.
Charles Leclerc qualified sixth for the Hungarian Grand Prix, with Carlos Sainz Jr. starting the race in 11th after failing to advance to Q3. Following qualifying, Vasseur pointed to a failure of tyre management as the main culprit.
“Our performance today has nothing to do with the new format, which is the same for everybody. We struggled to get a clear picture of our situation before the session, but what let us down is that we did not do a good job in terms of tyre management,” said the Ferrari boss. “In the end, with Charles we missed out on being one row further up the grid by less than a tenth. We were matching Lewis for all the session, but we could not do it at the end.”
Then in the Grand Prix itself, there were more mistakes.
First was a slow pit stop for Leclerc when a wheel gun failed, causing him to lose around seven seconds during the stop. On a subsequent pit stop, Leclerc was cited for speeding on pit lane, and he was hit with a five-second penalty.
While he finished the race where he started, in sixth, that five-second penalty dropped him to seventh.
“I was quite happy with my pace in the first stint, as we were managing things really well and keeping up with the cars ahead,” said Leclerc. “Then we lost time on our first pit stop, which put us on the back foot and I had to push to recover some positions. The penalty we got after the second stop was another thing that made things more difficult, so all in all, it wasn’t a great day.”
His performance found a few different critics throwing some jabs. The ESPN telecast ribbed the poor pit stop, with “[c]ome on Ferrari these are fundamentals” the point of contention. Then former driver and current Sky Sports F1 analyst Ralf Schumacher pinning the penalty squarely on the driver.
“With so much experience, that shouldn’t happen,” said Schumacher. “Those are always the things that line up with him. Of course, when things go badly, things often go really badly – but that can never happen in the area where he drives there.”
As for Sainz, the team started him on the soft compound and he had an impressive beginning to the race, picking up five spots in the opening laps. But when the team switched him to the hard compound for hopes of an extended run, the tyre wear was just too much, and he finished eighth.
“We had a good start, making up five places on the first lap, and a very good first stint with the Softs, managing to stretch the tyre life,” said Sainz. “Unfortunately, with the Hard compound and longer stints to do, we struggled with rear degradation and didn’t have the pace of the front runners, which is our main weakness at the moment.”
“We were expecting more at this track and we need to look into our main areas of improvement,” was the brutal assessment from Sainz.
As for Vasseur, he admitted again that the result was poor and that mistakes were a problem, particularly with Leclerc’s finish. “Our result is rather poor today. It was a complicated race with Charles, chiefly because he lost around seven seconds at the pit stop, which was a massive delay, because of an issue with a wheel-gun,” said the Ferrari boss. “This also put him in traffic and then there was also the 5-second pit lane speeding penalty.”
The team now has to quickly turn the page and make the most of the final race before the summer shutdown.
Where they need to again minimize mistakes.
“I have the feeling that we are not that far off the pace in terms of performance, but we did not put everything together over the whole weekend. We showed we had the potential on Friday, but then we did not build on it for Saturday or today in the race,” said Vasseur. “Now we really need to focus on Belgium, because it is always important to go into the summer break with a good result, find more pace and minimize mistakes.”
A common theme for Ferrari.
