The Italian press emotionally comments on Ferrari’s performance in Hungary…
Gazzetta dello Sport: “Formula 1 goes on holiday and Ferrari loses the title. Operation “We will win back” failed – in Paul Ricard and Hungary, Leclerc earned eight points against Max’s fifty. Verstappen could simply skip the next three stages in Spa, the Netherlands and Monza and still come to Singapore as championship leader.
In France it was a driver error that was blamed, in Hungary a questionable tire choice, although team boss Mattia Binotto blamed F1-75, which inexplicably lost speed. But the reality is that after 13 races Ferrari lost the chance of the title.
How could this happen? After a wonderful start to the season, the team seemed to have changed. Reliability issues and rider mistakes attacking at the limit – it happens, but the fans are baffled by the strategy. In Monaco, where overtaking by definition cannot be overtaken by starting with two cars in the front row, Ferrari failed to win due to hesitation when changing tires.
Then there was Silverstone, where they decided to leave Leclerc behind the safety car on the track. Now Hungary, where Verstappen started tenth and the Ferrari drivers second and third. Binotto swears F1-75 lacked speed, the defeat wasn’t due to the tyres, but in the all-important first stint Russell started from pole position on Soft, and Ferrari strategists decided to start the race on Medium, not letting go their drivers put up a fight – they just drove behind as Verstappen played back.
The team contradicted itself. On Saturday after qualifying Sainz said on Sunday it was necessary to overtake Russell as soon as possible after the start, and Binotto on the grid said overtaking is not necessary and the chance to take the lead will come later due to to strategy.
At Mercedes, who had doubts, they split the strategy – Russell started on Soft and Hamilton on Medium. Why not do the same? After the finish, Binotto said the car lacked speed and Leclerc said he wanted to do a longer stretch on the Medium because the pace was good. He was not listened to and transferred to slow tapes Hard.
“We need to talk about this within the team,” Leclerc said, commenting on the race results. Perhaps this sentence from Charles explains more than a thousand other words.
Source: F1 News
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