How decisions Ferrari aced and Red Bull regretted led to Leclerc’s Melbourne masterclass

Well, that wasn’t in the script. So far in Formula 1 2022, Ferrari and Red Bull, Charles Leclerc and Max Verstappen, had engaged in thrilling, lengthy fights for victory. Sharing the front row for the first Australian Grand Prix for three years – in front of a packed and expectant bumper crowd – more was predicted.

But chapter three wasn’t like the previous two. Instead, Leclerc utterly crushed his opposition – leading every lap from pole to take a fourth F1 career victory and claiming the fastest lap to boot. Verstappen, from far behind in second, retired with yet more engine trouble.

At the start of 58 laps in the dazzling Melbourne sunshine, Verstappen appeared to react fractionally faster to the lights than Leclerc. But the polesitter made a good enough start to swing right in front of his rival and ward off any attempt to attack to the inside for the first corner.

Instead, Verstappen was obliged to go to the outside for the reprofiled and now faster right-hander, which meant the following Sergio Perez had to check up and the fast-starting Lewis Hamilton dived into the free space next to the second Red Bull to slice into third.

That immediately removed Perez from the lead fight – but in any case, that was neutralised on the third lap as Carlos Sainz Jr’s miserable weekend in the other Ferrari ended in the Turn 10 exit gravel trap. The Spaniard had been trying to pass Haas’s Mick Schumacher in the preceding fast left but turned in from too far wide on hard tyres that were yet to reach the best temperature operating window. These quickly cried enough and Sainz squirmed onto the grass inside Turn 9, where he lost control and was spat across the road and into his eventual beached retirement.

The safety car was called into action after an initial virtual safety car activation. This meant, when racing resumed at the end of lap six, F1 would get to see just how the latest ‘Verstappen rule’ would play out – the drivers no longer allowed to put any part of their cars in front of the rear-most elements of a rival, as the Dutchman had done to Leclerc in Bahrain and Jeddah (and Hamilton back in the contentious 2021 Abu Dhabi finale) as part of a wider FIA crackdown on safety car period driving.

Sainz's spin into the gravel brought out the safety car, providing the first test for Leclerc at a restart

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

Newly appointed Red Bull head of race engineering Gianpiero Lambiase warned Verstappen to respect the new “rules of engagement”, as Leclerc prepared to take the pack back to racing speed.

He shot clear through the final corners but found the start of lap seven “a bit tricky” because “I had it [severe porpoising] before Turn 1”. The Ferrari was bouncing almost comically badly on a full tank, but Leclerc, who said “I don't know why, but I am not very sensitive to it” even when “it looks extremely bad on the onboards”, was unfazed. He quickly established a lead of 0.6s, which was 1.023s and out of Verstappen’s DRS threat by the end of the following tour.

With Perez bottled up behind Hamilton, the top two raced clear – the only drivers able to lap in the 1m23s bracket at this stage. Verstappen was dropping back, but not by much each time. That was until lap 11, when he shipped over a second in the final sector alone. The reason for this was a heavy left-front lock-up that almost had him off the road, after which he complained “my left front is completely grained” to Lambiase.

With Verstappen unable to match his searing pace in the 1m23s or risk further opening up his front-left medium, Leclerc ran clear

Ahead, Leclerc “didn't have too much graining” on the medium tyres the leaders had started on and could therefore press home his advantage. Simply put, with Verstappen unable to match his searing pace in the 1m23s or risk further opening up his front-left medium, Leclerc ran clear. Over the next six laps, after which came Verstappen’s lap 18 pitstop to take the hards, Leclerc’s lead grew from 3.1s to 8.3s.

“Especially on race pace, we were extremely strong,” he later reflected. “Tyres felt great from the first lap to the last lap.”

Leclerc’s lead was so large, Ferrari didn’t feel the need to bring him in until four laps after Verstappen. At the end of his out-lap, the gap between them stood at 6.9s – albeit with the caveat that by this point both were running to their safety car delta times, as the race had been nullified once again.

This time, Sebastian Vettel’s Aston Martin was the cause – the four-time world champion having speared off into the wall on the outside of the tight Turn 4 left that runs across the car park adjacent to the Victorian Institute of Sport. He’d hit the exit kerb too hard, unfamiliar with how much the new ground-effect machines detest such treatment, especially when running behind other cars (Vettel was chasing Alex Albon in net 17th place) due to missing the first two races of the year with COVID-19.

Leclerc could pull away as he pleased from Verstappen in between the safety car interruptions

Photo by: Carl Bingham / Motorsport Images

Vettel’s car needed to be recovered after he’d pulled up past the following Turn 5 fast right, which now has zero room for error with the wall close on the left-side exit, and the debris he’d strewn across the approach to the corner had to be cleared.

The drivers therefore spent three laps running behind the safety car – for this weekend the Aston Martin Vantage. That’s an important note because it is claimed, per Mercedes’ George Russell, to be “like five seconds” slower than the Mercedes-AMG GT Black Series used in Bahrain and Jeddah (F1 has an alternating sponsorship deal with both manufacturers).

Whatever the real pace gap between the two GT machines, it became important to this F1 race because both leaders felt it was going too slowly to help them maintain tyre temperature – a critical factor to succeeding last weekend due to the smooth new surface at Albert Park making rubber warm-up tough.

“The safety car was driving so slow, it was like a turtle,” Verstappen observed.

“I was struggling massively to put some temperature in then, so I also struggled,” said Leclerc. “Then, to be honest, I wanted to complain, but then I checked how much the safety car was sliding in the corner and I don't think there was anything more that he could give, so I didn't want to push too much pressure.”

This all mattered at the end of lap 26, the point just before racing resumed. As he led the pack through the final corner – Lambiase feeling the need to again remind Verstappen that he couldn’t pull his previous intimidation trick as the safety car was exiting the scene – Leclerc was “staying on the left” of the right-hander in a bid to slingshot around and surge clear of Verstappen.

But he understeered at this point, likely with the hards too cold (Verstappen’s extra four laps on that compound giving him a heat-retention benefit all through the second safety car period) and ran onto the tyre marbles littering the run onto the main straight.

“I just couldn’t turn for the last corner,” said Leclerc. “So, I lost so much. And then we were side-by-side with Max.”

Leclerc's tyre warm-up struggles after the second safety car allowed Verstappen to attack, but he held onto the lead

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

The Red Bull had been quickly into the Ferrari’s tow, but was again shown to the outside, as the relatively short length of the main Melbourne straight meant Verstappen ran out of time to blast ahead. He had a look approaching the tight Turn 3 right but to no avail – Leclerc escaping to a restored 1.2s lead at the end of the first lap back racing.

And things then played out in a very familiar fashion. Just like in stint one, Leclerc romped away from Verstappen. He was able to run in the 1m22s – and forged a metronomic run in that bracket as he increased his advantage by 4.3s over the next nine laps that followed the restart tour.

After this stretch, Verstappen popped in a 1m21.677s that was at the time the race’s quickest. It raised hopes of a fightback, but Leclerc’s immediate 1m21.291s response flattened that, and what happened next dashed it completely.

"Clearly, we are struggling with reliability. And as whole team, we need to fix it. At the moment there is no reason to believe in [retaining the title]" Max Verstappen

Late in lap 38, Verstappen reported “I smell some weird fluid” then quickly said “it's shitting itself” and, as he headed into Turn 1 on the next tour, Lambiase ordered him to stop by a fire marshal’s post. Verstappen pulled off at the exit of the second corner and retired, his RB18’s airbox smoking.

“It looks like a fuel system issue, external to the tank, that has caused the issue,” explained Red Bull team boss Christian Horner. “We could see from the data that something was wrong, and Max could smell it as well. Something totally separate [to the fuel system vacuum issue that caused both Red Bulls to retire in Bahrain].”

Red Bull had been concerned about the hydraulic system on Verstappen’s car ahead of the race, topping it up with fluid in a bid to ease its worries. That meant the Dutchman “knew there was a possibility [of retiring]”, but he’d “tried not to think about it and just focus on my race”.

Leaving Melbourne, 46 points down on Leclerc, the world champion can’t think of anything but his reliability woes, let alone successfully defending his crown.

“I don't even think about it,” he concluded. “Clearly, we are struggling with reliability. And as whole team, we need to fix it. At the moment there is no reason to believe in [retaining the title].”

Verstappen's DNF leaves him 46 points down on Leclerc after only three races

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

As Verstappen wallowed, Leclerc celebrated. For the final 18 laps that followed the second VSC – required while the Melbourne marshals were pulling Verstappen’s car behind the Turn 2 inside barriers – his only concern was making sure he secured the fastest lap.

Twice he begged to be allowed to put in another flier, despite having a commanding lead. Ferrari rebuffed these requests but, on the final lap, even while lapping both Haas cars, Leclerc popped in a stunning 1m20.260s.

And it was lucky he did as Fernando Alonso’s late stop for fresh mediums – his stint two mediums ruined in the battles at the fringes of the points that followed far from Leclerc’s serene triumph up front – meant he produced a 1m20.846s. This was 0.1s quicker than the winner’s previous personal best.

“We were all surprised by our pace,” Leclerc reflected in the post-race (podium) press conference, which he has now appeared in as many times in 2022 as he did in all of the last two seasons combined.

“On the hard, we probably expected Red Bull to be a bit closer in terms of pace, but also there we seemed to have the upper hand. And yeah, after qualifying and FP2, we didn't see that performance difference between us and Red Bull. So, it was a very good surprise.”

Far behind the winner, there was a race for the inherited second place. This battle stretched all the way back to Hamilton’s opportunistic pass on Perez at the first corner.

Once DRS was activated after the first restart, Perez had used it to put in a smart pass on Hamilton on the inside of Turn 3 on lap 10. By then he faced a 6.4s gap to Leclerc, who he never got near again.

This was because, like Verstappen, Perez struggled badly for pace as the first stint on the mediums wore on. He initially pulled away and gapped Hamilton to a maximum advantage of 3.3s at the end of lap 15, but from there the Mercedes came back.

Perez twice had to pass Hamilton, and was promoted to second after Verstappen's DNF - but was never able to threaten Leclerc

Photo by: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images

Hamilton’s pace was so strong that when Perez was called in for his sole stop two laps after Verstappen’s service, for the same compound swap, the Mercedes actually overcut ahead of the Mexican.

Mercedes stopped Hamilton two laps after Perez (just after Ferrari pitted Leclerc) and he emerged ahead. But the two laps already firing up the hards meant Perez had been able to complete the tyre warm-up challenge on the white-walled rubber Peter Bonnington was hurriedly warning Hamilton to expect.

Perez therefore ran down his rival and pounced as they roared towards the Turn 9 left kink – the Red Bull well ahead on the outside line as they turned in. It was an important move for Perez’s race, as it meant he had one less car to overtake after the second safety car period, which started seconds after his second pass on Hamilton.

"I really wanted to push it further, but I recognised that we probably would have just fell off a cliff if I went even harder. The Red Bull was just too quick for us" George Russell

But he did have an unexpected rival. Not Alonso, who’s hard tyre contra-starting-strategy meant he was running ahead of Perez at the second restart. It was Russell, who had been able to complete his one pitstop during the Vettel safety car. With his rivals’ pace restricted, he left the pits to run behind Verstappen.

“I was thinking ‘Happy Days!’, to be honest,” he later joked. “No, we obviously had a bit of fortune there – but that’s part of the game.”

Another key part of F1 is tyre management, which became a critical factor in the outcome of the race for the final podium spots. For six laps after Perez had got by Alonso to run fourth, Russell defied the Red Bull’s attentions.

But on lap 35, with Hamilton by this point clear of the Alpine and homing in on the fight, Riccardo Musconi warned Russell “tyre management is more important than position”. Russell replied that was “not what I wanna hear”, but when Perez used DRS to get a run on the outside going into the Turn 11 right at the end of the back straight on the subsequent tour, Russell didn’t fight him too hard.

“I really wanted to push it further, but I recognised that we probably would have just fell off a cliff if I went even harder,” he explained afterwards. “The Red Bull was just too quick for us.”

Pitting during Vettel's safety car allowed Russell to jump ahead of Perez and Hamilton, but he couldn't repel the Red Bull either

Photo by: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images

Perez pulled a five-second gap on Russell over the race’s final third, which became about whether the younger Briton could stay in front of Hamilton. The gap between them dwindled to as little as a second but, although things looked poised for an intra-team showdown, it never came.

On lap 54, Hamilton complained “you guys put me in a really difficult position”, but this was in reference to him being unable to “race for position because the car was overheating, so I had to back off”. Russell felt Hamilton “was pushing flat out until the end, but I think it was well managed and was always able to stay out of the DRS detection”.

In any case, the result was not just Russell’s first podium for Mercedes but also, amazingly given the Silver Arrows’ shocking pace deficit to Ferrari and Red Bull, second in the drivers’ standings behind Leclerc.

That alone is damning indictment of Red Bull’s reliability woe, but that wasn’t the cause of its defeat to Ferrari last Sunday. Instead, the key reason appears to be the respective post-FP2 decisions each team took on how they’d set up their machines in anticipation of certain types of tyre wear in the hottest conditions of the event, which came on race day.

Red Bull, according to Horner, “thought the race was going to be rear limited” based on “a lot of graining on rear tyres” in FP2. But this focus was one the wrong axle, which meant Red Bull “ran a higher downforce level compared to what they had, for example, in Jeddah”, according to Ferrari team boss Mattia Binotto, in a bid to keep its rears in better shape.

But the track “rubbering in and particularly the temperature [on Sunday coming up]”, said Horner, combined badly with that choice. Perez said this was still a compromise aimed at dumping as much drag as possible to gain a straightline speed boost.

It meant the RB18s were “very sensitive” in the slower, technical final corners of sector three where “it was really easy to get it wrong”, said Perez, as evidenced by Verstappen’s lap 11 lock-up on the mediums and Perez also sliding off at the same point with seven tours remaining.

“It is part of our issue,” said Perez. “Sector three was really weak for us. And we had to do a lot of compromises for that, which really affected us throughout the circuit.”

Contrary approaches to set-up hindered Red Bull and helped Ferrari

Photo by: FIA Pool

That ‘issue’ was one Ferrari did not have, and it came down to car balance. Red Bull’s work to keep straightline speed while running a bigger downforce package meant its drivers were rarely confident all weekend. Leclerc’s car was compliant, even when porpoising badly.

“Having a well-balanced car was a key element in the view of tyre management,” said Binotto. “Charles did a pretty good job in that.”

"Having a well-balanced car was a key element in the view of tyre management. Charles did a pretty good job in that" Mattia Binotto

But the key factor in Ferrari’s second victory of the season concerned its own post-FP2 choice. Having led the way there on pure pace but been a fraction behind Verstappen on the long-run data gathering averages, the Scuderia correctly identified that, with the heat set to go up on Sunday, it had to adjust its plans to avoid front left-tyre graining. A decision it aced and from which it reaped the ultimate race reward.

“It was an issue which we were concerned about and we knew would certainly be a concern on the mediums,” Binotto explained. “So, we worked on it since Friday. We set up on the balance and tyres management with the drivers. Finally, luckily enough I would say, we didn't suffer in the race, and we had a better pace.”

Optimal balance helped Leclerc's cause in Melbourne

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images