The elements Ferrari must resolve to first save face, then win championships

When do we start saying it’s all over? That any remaining hope of Charles Leclerc taking the 2022 Formula 1 title battle with Max Verstappen down to the wire has been snuffed out. Perhaps lap 39 of the Hungarian Grand Prix last weekend was a good place to call time. That’s when Ferrari committed its latest strategy shocker and pitted Leclerc bafflingly for a set of hard tyres that were about as suited to the dry conditions as “wets”, so reckoned Lando Norris.

As a result, Leclerc finished sixth in a race won by Verstappen, when the red machine had lined up on the grid in third and the Red Bull 10th. This was without rain throwing a curveball or a full-blown safety car bunching the pack - just two virtual safety cars, which maintain the intervals. For good measure, Verstappen also spun and was nursing a poorly clutch and upshifts.

The championship picture now looks like this: if Leclerc was somehow to triumph in the nine remaining rounds after the summer break, set fastest lap in all of them and win the Brazil sprint contest, he would end the campaign with 420 points. That is the exact same total Verstappen would amass should he finish second in every GP until the end of the year.

Ferrari must resolve the issues that have so badly let the drivers’ and constructors’ crowns get away - the Scuderia now trailing Red Bull by 97 points. But any fixes will almost certainly come too late for 2022. The remedies it needs to find over the summer break are now about avoiding further embarrassment. Then it perhaps can consider title success in the future.

Adhering to the adage that ‘to finish first, first you must finish’, the unreliability must be knocked on the head as a matter of priority. Leclerc lost a nailed-on victory in Spain initiated by the failure of his turbo and MGU-H. Then a likely win was blown in Azerbaijan when the engine self-immolated. But it mustn’t be forgotten that Carlos Sainz’s car also expired at Baku and in Austria, where Leclerc bagged the spoils despite the late scare of a sticking throttle damper. Red Bull, meanwhile, got its gremlins out the way early. It has now not endured an attrition-inspired retirement since the fuel system faults of Bahrain and Australia.

It is, of course, up for debate whether it’s preferable to have a fast but fragile car, or a solid but slower one. Under the current 2022 regulations, Ferrari might have got it the right way around. The low-speed might of the Italian power unit is peerless and when blended with the Canada-spec rear wing, makes the F1-75 the quicker contender at present.

A despondent Leclerc after crashing out of the lead at the French GP

Photo by: Carl Bingham / Motorsport Images

That it breaks can be handled via the wiggle room in the regulations. After debuting an updated MGU-K for the inaugural Miami GP, which appeared to kickstart the run of fragility for the works and customer squads of Alfa Romeo and Haas, it can continue to tweak the specification until September, when the configuration will be locked in. But there can be modifications made for the purposes of improving reliability. Consequently, Ferrari can theoretically remedy its reliability weaknesses more than it could have taken a step forward with performance.

The attrition rate has limited the chances Leclerc and Sainz have had to land wins, which is why Leclerc’s spin into the barriers from first place in France was all the more costly. By getting on top of the unreliability, the opportunities for success will naturally be greater.

That’s surely played a part in the strategic blunders at Monaco, Silverstone, Paul Ricard and Hungaroring copping quite as much flack as they have. In so far as on the days the cars have been in position and still running, the pitwall has blown the opportunity. Had the flag been reached at Barcelona and Baku, perhaps the Scuderia would have nailed its tactics to make the strategy fumbles seem less common a problem.

Clearly, however, its pit procedures – both in terms of sloppy execution to bleed away time – and poor tactics are a massive issue at present. To outline the problems of Hungary alone, it bet everything on the hard tyre - a compound neither car had at any point run during that weekend. It then didn’t touch the soft Pirellis it had unlocked so brilliant and ran so extensively in second practice until the final 20 laps of the race.

While Binotto has absolutely stated that there will be a review of what went wrong last weekend, it will focus on those 70 laps specifically. But perhaps a step back is needed if it’s Ferrari’s overall philosophy that is indeed lacking, as suspected

The tacticians had also watched the afternoons of both Haas and Alpines falter massively the moment they moved onto the white-wall rubber. Mercedes, Red Bull and McLaren said that from the lap to the grid onwards, the hards had never been part of the equation. But they were apparently essential to Ferrari’s sums.

Alongside the Plans A-F that are shuffled through over team radio every race, it certainly seems as though there’s an element at Ferrari of waiting for events to neatly fall within a certain box. But F1 is rarely that kind in a multi-team fight for the spoils.

By contrast, Red Bull won last weekend by acting on the fly and improvising. Meanwhile, Ferrari refused to blur the lines and insisted on sticking to seemingly preordained strategies. Perhaps the team might be accused of over-preparing and over analysing, when actually being more fleet of foot would be more beneficial rather than focusing solely on the empirical.

Binotto has come under pressure since Ferrari's run of strategy mistakes and unreliability has derailed its title charge

Photo by: Ferrari

How Ferrari goes about addressing its strategy nightmares might also give cause for concern. Publicly, at least, team boss Mattia Binotto has unwaveringly defended the calls that lost a win in Monaco, the 1-2 at Silverstone and a podium for Sainz at Paul Ricard. He then said after Hungary: “If I look again at the balance of the first half of the season, there is no reason why we should change.”

While Binotto has absolutely stated that there will be a review of what went wrong last weekend, it will focus on those 70 laps specifically. But perhaps a step back is needed if it’s Ferrari’s overall philosophy that is indeed lacking, as suspected.

The worry heading into next season and beyond after this major regulatory rule reset is that Ferrari has failed to convert its fine chance with the rapid F1-75. Red Bull knows it must solve the RB18’s weight problem for its successor and will focus majorly on that weakness. Based on the team’s in- and off-season development record, would you bet against Adrian Newey and his colleagues? That’s before a recovering Mercedes surely comes into play.

As such, it’s not only up to Ferrari to sort its current problems, but also take a stride forward over the next eight months equal in size to Red Bull. That will offer the Scuderia its best bet of being in the hunt for 2023 to end what will soon be a 15-year championship drought.

Ferrari's F1 title drought appears set to continue in 2022

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images