Anatomy of an awful Ferrari blunder

Charles Leclerc was let down badly in Monaco Grand Prix qualifying. Ferrari's trust in its data, established in a flawed manner, caused it to ignore developments occuring before its very eyes. Only when it was too late to prevent Leclerc's elimination did the consequences of the blunder become apparent. The inquest began shortly afterwards.

Leclerc will be fortunate to make it back into the top six unscathed when he lines up 15th after being knocked out in the first part of qualifying.

He shoulders a minor proportion of the responsibility. Had he not locked up at Rascasse on the sole set of tyres Ferrari wanted him to use in Q1, he would have been a few more tenths to the good and not reliant on the team's flawed calculation of the cut-off time to make Q2, which it adhered to in a manner bordering on blind faith.

Yet he did lock up, he did not improve, and Ferrari had plenty of opportunity to save his qualifying session thereafter. So why did it not?

Ferrari tripped up over what team principal Mattia Binotto called "basics" by misjudging the cut-off time. This is a target that is adjusted in real time. That could be considered a failsafe of sorts: the team does not qualify blind and hope a given time is enough. There is a reference point, calculated live as drivers are on track, that should protect against complacency.

On top of this, Ferrari normally adds a "margin" to its cut-off time. Binotto said this is usually "good enough to afford for any tolerances, uncertainty, which may happen normally during a session". In other words, a second failsafe. But crucially in Monaco, "the margin we applied was not sufficient, or very little".

Ferrari gave two reasons for this. It underestimated the track evolution through to the end of Q1, and how much of a step drivers would make as their confidence grew.

"We were taking risks, too many risks, which were not worthwhile in such a situation" Mattia Binotto

The irony is Ferrari had acknowledged the massive influence of driver confidence on lap time in Monaco 24 hours earlier, during a special media briefing on the specific challenges of this race. It just did not account for this sufficiently with its qualifying strategy.

"In Monaco that margin needs to be increased in the future, no doubt," said Binotto.

These are the errors behind the false confidence that undid Ferrari and cost Leclerc so badly. It explains why the team stuck steadfastly to its decision not to run again, even as circumstances changed and Leclerc himself questioned the team's tactics.

"We should have overruled it," Binotto said. "We didn't. When you've got tools and simulations you should somehow trust what you're doing.

"We were fully cautious that it would have been tight, but our tools were telling us it would have been good enough.

"We were taking risks, too many risks, [which were] not worthwhile in such a situation. It's a misjudgement. And a misjudgement is a mistake."

Ferrari's procedures, and the effective failsafes within, were evidently flawed. Perhaps that was unfortunate. And Leclerc's gap to the fastest time in Q1 was 0.715s: the second smallest gap from the fastest time to the first eliminated driver since the three-stage qualifying system came into play in 2006.

The only closer margin was Monza 2009 when Toyota's Timo Glock was 0.687s off the pace but still eliminated. So there is a degree to which Ferrari can feel aggrieved at seeing its gamble fail.

But Ferrari's decision to take such a risk in the first place can also be scrutinised.

F1 strategy is the most complicated game of high-stakes chess, especially in qualifying when the pieces and the board itself are constantly changing. It is probability and risk evaluation during a shrinking time period. Mistakes can happen, so the key is to mitigate the simplest errors. This protects against almost everything except the most extremely unpredictable variables. Ferrari did not do this.

"We may argue that as Ferrari these are mistakes that should not happen," Binotto reasoned.

"I think that as Ferrari we are facing a situation where we need to catch up points on the championship. We need to catch up compared to our competitors. When you need to catch up you need to take some risks as well."

In Monaco qualifying this took the form of wanting to get through Q1 on one set of tyres. This was possible had Leclerc not made the mistake on his second flying lap early on.

Ferrari is desperately trying to hit back against Mercedes after losing so much ground over the first five races. It appears that clouded its judgement on Saturday in Monaco.

Instead of reacting to the situation playing out and focusing on maximising what it could do in shifting circumstances, Ferrari tethered itself to a predetermined target. This was fatal for Leclerc's qualifying hopes.

"Taking margin [against the threat of elimination in Q1] would mean to use a second set of tyres, to miss then a set of tyres for Q2 and Q3," said Binotto.

"For us, certainly today, taking some risks was key to perform as best as we could in Q2 and Q3 to be challenging our main competitors in Q3 together with Charles and Seb.

"But no doubt when you look at that, the implication of not entering Q2 is even bigger than trying to challenge them in the final part of quali."

So, to recap: Ferrari made an error calculating its data and then another mistake in standing by that data. The final question in the post-mortem becomes: were there enough warning signs for Leclerc's qualifying peril to have been identified at the time?

Vettel delivered the killer blow with the lap that saved himself

The answer is yes. Watch the qualifying session back and for those whose job it was to monitor threats to Leclerc, it should have become clear his lap time wasn't good enough. Even Leclerc was aware he was under threat - and asked if he should run again. Ferrari should have agreed, but it should not have needed to be asked.

The first warning came with 10 minutes to go. Leclerc was fourth in the standings on a 1m12.149s, 0.424s behind pacesetter Max Verstappen and only half a tenth slower than Lewis Hamilton. There was a full second between Leclerc and the Haas of Romain Grosjean in 15th, but Grosjean's team-mate Kevin Magnussen then posted a 1m11.865s. That was a clear indicator of what a car in the midfield group was capable of.

A few seconds later, Leclerc locked up at Rascasse and spoiled a lap that would almost certainly have rendered this entire problem moot. The team should have recognised that its strategy of using one set of tyres was seriously compromised at this point, and Leclerc should have sought to improve. Hamilton did, and found 0.4s by staying out on old tyres - not an option for Leclerc, since he had flat-spotted his during the lock-up.

"My first lap, they said I was safe - but that I could stay out and do more," said Hamilton. "I decided to stay out and better my time and see the track improve."

Ferrari insists that it was not distracted at this point by Vettel being half a second slower than Leclerc in 10th and quickly fading towards (and then into) the drop zone. Each driver has his own dedicated team, so this was not a factor.

With five minutes to go Leclerc was still sixth, but only 0.8s clear of the drop zone. Grosjean then leapt from 13th, 1.1s off the pace, to fifth on a 1m11.837s - a gain of 0.8s...

"Charles asked from his cockpit, 'Should I go out, I think it's a bit too marginal, we may be at risk,'" said Binotto. "We replied, 'No, we've got the data, and we believe that's good enough.' It wasn't."

As Leclerc's car remained in the garage with three minutes still on the clock, the timing screen was alight with personal best sectors from 11 realistic threats to Leclerc's Q2 place. He only needed to be overhauled by nine drivers to drop out. When those runs finished, Leclerc had lost five places.

But there was still a second flying lap to come. Vettel remained in the drop zone, but was on track. Based on the efforts of their respective team-mates, Lando Norris, Nico Hulkenberg and Alex Albon all had a car capable of lapping quicker than Leclerc's time too.

The target was rooted in the garage and helpless to do anything. One by one Leclerc slipped to the edge of oblivion - and Vettel delivered the killer blow with the lap that saved himself.

The upshot is Leclerc faces an unenviable task in Monaco on Sunday and Ferrari must now review its processes to ensure this doesn't happen again.

"There are people managing the tools in the team," said Binotto. "There are people responsible for taking the decision deciding the threshold. There are as well people responsible for deciding to overrule, eventually, any decisions.

"So if on one side we made a mistake on misjudging the margin, we didn't overrule it as well. Which was certainly an opportunity.

"I think we've got the right people and the right procedures but we need to improve our tools. It opened a new opportunity of looking at what we did and how we may do that differently in the future.

"That's something that will be addressed from the next race onwards, no doubt."

Fixing such problems will be important for future campaigns but, barring a miracle, any lingering hope Leclerc had of remaining in contention for the 2019 title was dealt a hammer-blow in qualifying.

Car performance is one thing but, whether by much or by little, Ferrari is lacking on the operational side as well.

As Hamilton pointed out after pursuing the opposite strategy paved the way for him to storm to pole: "They chose to risk it. We don't really take many risks like that."

Ferrari believes it needs to take such risks to catch Mercedes, because it is behind in the championship. Perhaps a penchant for taking such risks is part of the reason it is behind.