How Ferrari’s Monaco headache became its Silverstone migraine

When the safety car was deployed late in the British Grand Prix, Ferrari effectively had realistically three options in order to maximise its chances of victory and even a 1-2 finish. It picked the worst one.

The team was hardly going to leave both Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc out on degrading rubber to defend against Lewis Hamilton and Sergio Perez to the flag. So, it could either pit Sainz, pit Leclerc or pit both. Ultimately, Leclerc was left out to take track position.

That created a scenario of Ferrari tasking its driver with persevering on ageing hard tyres in addition to continuing with the handicap of his missing front wing endplate that was costing performance. All while fighting off chasers on the quickest-available soft Pirellis. That in isolation was a highly questionable call, let alone considering that Leclerc is Ferrari’s best title hope.

At an archetypal, wide, open F1 circuit after the run of Monaco, Baku and Montreal, it appears Ferrari didn’t have the faith in its drivers to overtake to regain track position should Hamilton have stayed out. Perhaps it was still haunted by events in the principality…

Of course, this is not the first time Ferrari has committed to a strategy clanger this season. In Monaco, Leclerc led a front-row lockout. But amid the wet-weather, Ferrari was too reactionary and allowed Perez to hop on a powerful intermediate tyre undercut. Red Bull split its strategy with Verstappen as the Scuderia stopped Leclerc twice in quick succession before fumbling a double-stack pitstop.

That day, an almost certain 1-2 was lost to be replaced with second place for Sainz and fourth for Leclerc. And although a driver dressed in red still took to the top step of the podium at Silverstone last weekend, Sainz converting his maiden pole position on his 150th GP start, arguably Ferrari comes away smelling even less like roses.

PLUS: The five factors behind Sainz winning a British GP he’d twice lost

Sainz called his own strategic shots at Monaco and Silverstone - and has benefitted amid Ferrari uncertainty

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

For one, the strategy calls have not been fixed. They still leave a lot to be desired, and that is despite a full debrief at Maranello. It is clear that the indecision and mistakes are still there.

Worse, this came on a day when Verstappen wasn’t breathing down its neck. The defending champion had already made Sainz crack with his off at Becketts. On another day, that alone might have cost the win, only for the RB18 to run over an AlphaTauri end plate to shed downforce and cause Verstappen to tumble down the order and out of the picture. Similarly, Sergio Perez had been 17th on lap six after pitting to rectify front wing damage following a brush with Leclerc through the Loop section. While the Mexican recovered well, prior to the safety car he had been only in a battle with Fernando Alonso for fifth. Instead, he walked away with second place. That massively stemmed the loss of points for Red Bull when Ferrari had a clear chance to inflict some more considerable damage.

While every recognition should go to Sainz for his reading of the race, it is again to the discredit of the pitwall that it was the driver calling the shots at the safety car restart

And worse than Monaco, perhaps the most worrying element of all for Ferrari, is just how many strategic blunders it committed in the British GP. While Leclerc sustained his early endplate damage to cost around 5% downforce, he still was demonstrably the quicker Ferrari driver. Given he was nursing a problem, it surely made more sense for Ferrari to have struck while the iron was hot and release Leclerc from behind Sainz to build an advantage should his pace supremacy have bled away. Instead, it left a wounded car to play rear gunner by not reacting quickly and swapping the drivers. With a slower Sainz dictating the pace, it allowed Hamilton to close. Whether acting like a rabbit in the headlights is too harsh an assessment, there was nevertheless a sense that Ferrari was waiting in the hope the situation would sort itself out naturally.

Sticking with the running order, Hamilton took the lead on lap 26 of 52 after Leclerc had pitted. With Sainz then ahead of his team-mate, only then did Ferrari allow the pair to fight. Just at the time it was critical that one or both of its drivers remained within the pit window of the Mercedes for when it eventually stopped, Ferrari gave the OK for its drivers to delay one another by going toe-to-toe. Again, Ferrari got off lightly in this moment.

The talk after the Spanish GP when Red Bull firmly imposed team orders was that it was too early in the season to be so definitively establishing an internal hierarchy. Ferrari went the other way at Silverstone and was seemingly too sentimental. But it is in second place in the championship, so needs to make the tough decisions to close the gap. Instead, its strategic rustiness was exposed further.

By staying out on old tyres, Leclerc was hung out to dry at the end of the British GP

Photo by: James Sutton / Motorsport Images

While every recognition should go to Sainz for his reading of the race, it is again to the discredit of the pitwall that it was the driver calling the shots at the safety car restart. Sainz was asked to fall back 10 car lengths to provide a buffer to Leclerc, but the eventual winner rebuffed the request. He acknowledged that should Hamilton nip past at the restart, Leclerc would then have been a sitting duck. Again, kudos to Sainz for his stubbornness, intervention, and ability to have enough mental capacity left over to plot ahead. But it only serves to ask more questions of the Scuderia strategy that it was the driver calling the shots.

Perhaps team boss Mattia Binotto just wanted to save face but if not, his reaction to the blunders was curious last Sunday night. He was asked to defend the strategic calls to fans. His reply: “What would they have done differently then? I think the decisions we took were the right ones and the proper ones at each single time.” That seems too defensive, too unwilling to review the scenarios to see if at each time, Ferrari did the best that it could.

The engine blow-ups that eliminated Leclerc from the victory battle in both Spain and Azerbaijan emphasised the need for Ferrari to seize its critical opportunities to most effectively slash the gap to fiercest rival Red Bull. It hasn’t done that. In the last five races, Ferrari has cost Leclerc 58 points through unreliability. That has now been compounded by the 26 points lost through strategic blunders. And Verstappen has been there to pick up extra points at all but Silverstone as a result.

Sainz was a popular winner at Silverstone. Even though the Austrian GP follows straight after, he had enough time to celebrate and wake up on Monday morning with a sore head. Ferrari’s strategists, meanwhile, have spent too much time at key moments in 2022 scratching theirs.

Carlos Sainz, Ferrari F1-75, Charles Leclerc, Ferrari F1-75

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images