Wasser: We made the wrong decision, but we did it together

The history of Formula 1 is full of examples of Ferrari strategists making highly questionable decisions that led to unpleasant consequences, and this past weekend added to that sad list.

Since winning in Monaco in May, Charles Leclerc has only managed 12 points, and the British Grand Prix turned out to be a complete nightmare for him, as he finished 14th, losing to Lewis Hamilton, the race winner and his future partner, by more than a lap.

Journalists from The Race analyzed Ferrari’s tactics and found no convincing explanation for them.

After a poor qualifying, Leclerc started 11th, but gained three positions on the first lap before getting stuck behind the Aston Martin of Lance Stroll. On lap 13, he overtook the Canadian, moving up to 7th position and was at that point around 5 seconds behind his teammate Carlos Sainz. However, in just six laps, his lead grew to almost 15 seconds.

According to Ferrari, it was the gap to Sainz that made Leclerc the only driver in the top ten to go for intermediate tyres as early as lap 19. Sergio Perez (Red Bull Racing), Esteban Ocon (Alpine) and Guanyu Zhou (Sauber) followed suit, but they were at the back of the pack.

After this, events unfolded as follows: on intermediate tyres, Leclerc completed laps an average of 14 seconds slower than Sainz, who, like most of the race participants, remained on slicks.

By the time it actually came time to switch to intermediate tyres (Carlos did this on lap 26), such tyres on Leclerc’s Ferrari had already overheated, lost their efficiency and he had to go for the next set of intermediate tyres on lap 27, which only increased his lead and he had already lost more than a lap.

At the end of the lap when leaving the pits after the second pit stop he was already 114.555 seconds behind Sainz. Of course, in this situation Leclerc lost all chances to earn points and at the finish he could only stay ahead of the Sauber drivers, as well as Ocon and Perez, who also fell victim to a failed experiment with tactics.

Nevertheless, Frederic Vasseur, the head of the Italian team, believes that it was still worth using the risky tactics, because without them there was no chance of a good result at all. Indeed, the SF-24 car at Silverstone was clearly inferior in terms of speed to Mercedes, McLaren and Red Bull…

“We provide the drivers with information and offer this or that solution,” Vasseur tried to explain Ferrari’s logic after the finish. “The fact is that at some point a pit stop has to be made and the final say remains with the drivers.

Of course we are upset by these results, and I have already discussed the situation with Charles. It was clearly a bad decision, but I would say it was due to the fact that he was already 15 seconds behind Carlos at that stage of the race.

This means that, willingly or unwillingly, you come to the conclusion that the only way to get back into the fight for the podium is to use aggressive tactics. But we made the wrong decision, because without this Charles could have finished sixth. But we made this decision together.

And yet I’m not so angry, because you can remember that on that same 19th lap Hamilton and Russell were off the track in the first corner, and the same happened to another car in the 15th. At that point everything was on the edge, and this decision could turn out to be very reasonable…

Although when you ride in a group of leaders you don’t take such a risk, but copy the actions of the others, which is what Carlos did.”

You could agree with Vasseur’s arguments if Leclerc had no chance to earn points, but he clearly had such a chance, but Ferrari missed it, and they did it too clearly somehow. Although if Leclerc had finished at least sixth behind his teammate, that could already be considered as minimizing the losses.

The pace of the Aston Martin car also failed to reach the podium, but both team drivers finished in the top ten.

The Scuderia’s president made it clear that the team had learned the necessary lessons and that the experience gained would be useful in the future: “Now we have to analyse everything that we learned last weekend and apply these conclusions in the next two races.”