Why Ferrari is picking the hardest Vettel vs Leclerc option

Recent flashpoints between Charles Leclerc and Sebastian Vettel have raised a valid question: why is Ferrari trying to handle its Formula 1 drivers so precisely?

Mattia Binotto has an answer. It's up to you if you believe it, or agree with it. The Ferrari team boss is unlikely to care either way. Ferrari is his responsibility, Leclerc and Vettel are his drivers, and he will choose how to handle the "luxury" of having to control two alphas in the same garage.

"It's not tough because they are both very good drivers, smart drivers," says Binotto during one of many television interviews on the subject during the Japanese Grand Prix weekend. "You can always try to let them race. That's the easiest situation. But we are trying to manage our drivers to the benefit of the team and the drivers themselves.

"Sometimes you may do some bad decisions but overall we can learn from them and be strong for the future."

We will come to those "bad decisions" soon enough. The primary concern is that, Ferrari being Ferrari, even the high points of Binotto's first season in charge have come with underlying problems.

Ferrari's approach to team orders has often been at the centre of this. When Leclerc won the team's home race at Monza, Vettel made another mistake. That meant more attention was on the balance of power between Ferrari's two drivers than its victory in front of the Tifosi. But it was exaggerated by Leclerc flouting a team order in qualifying 24 hours previously.

In Singapore, Vettel ended his win drought and Ferrari's streak extended to three races. But the spotlight was on the team's strategy and team dynamic after Vettel inherited the lead because of a pitwall decision to pit him before poleman and race leader Leclerc. That triggered an extremely unhappy series of messages from Leclerc over the radio, broadcast to the entire listening audience.

Onto Russia, and the height of Ferrari's team-orders dilemma. Leclerc qualified on pole, Vettel started third, and the two executed a well-choreographed start that allowed Vettel to use his team-mate's slipstream and get ahead of Lewis Hamilton's Mercedes.

Ferrari is actively making its life more difficult. Binotto says the most effective strategy for Leclerc and Vettel as individuals is to be aggressive, selfish, ruthless.

But after Leclerc stayed true and did not block Vettel's run all the way down to Turn 2 and ceded the lead, the four-time world champion then refused an order to hand the position back. As was meant to have been previously agreed...

Other factors have often intervened to cause trouble. In Russia, Ferrari would still have salvaged a 1-2 if an MGU-K problem hadn't forced Vettel to retire and caused a safety car period that screwed Leclerc and gifted the race to Mercedes.

Earlier in the year, in Bahrain, another reliability problem cost Leclerc the win. And in the most recent race at Suzuka, where Ferrari's run of poles continued, the team turned a 1-2 start into a 2-7 finish thanks to Vettel's botched launch and Leclerc wiping out Max Verstappen at the first corner.

Ferrari at least dodged a team-orders bullet on this occasion, but just because its latest race implosion did not come with a side of scepticism and scrutiny doesn't mean the issue of how it handles its drivers has disappeared.

Binotto was pressed at length on the issue during the Japanese GP weekend. It is impressive and telling, in equal measure, that he was resolute and consistent in how he responded to the questions over the "misunderstanding", as Leclerc put it, in Russia.

"I don't want to speak about the misunderstanding, that's something we discuss with the team and the drivers," said Binotto. "We could have done better. Our attempt was to try to manage the first lap. There is always something you can learn from, the better to try to improve for the future.

"Then we had at least a great discussion, positive, transparent and honest."

That discussion took place at Maranello, where Binotto met with Leclerc and Vettel independently in the aftermath of the Sochi race. It became clear afterwards that the two drivers evidently had different views over what explicitly had been agreed pre-race.

Vettel subsequently took responsibility for refusing the team's instruction to let Leclerc past. Whatever was or was not agreed, what cannot be denied is that Ferrari told Vettel to move aside - and he said no.

That's why Binotto admits "we should have had more clarity before the start". He suspects that Ferrari might have "rushed" the discussion as it worked out how to win the race as a team. It felt the "best opportunity" was "to be one-and-two on the first lap". So the priority became how to orchestrate that situation, rather than let it play out naturally.

Whether you agree with such race manipulation or not, team orders are allowed and there is merit to the argument. That's why Binotto believes attempting to control the situation from the very beginning is "a good attempt". And he reiterates: "You can always decide to let them race. That would be the easier solution."

To put it another way, Ferrari is actively making its life more difficult. Binotto says the most effective strategy for Leclerc and Vettel as individuals is to be aggressive, selfish, ruthless.

Ferrari's job, according to Binotto, is to rein that in and make them drive for the team, putting aside personal objectives for the greater good. An optimist might call that... optimistic. A cynic would say it's naive.

Binotto contends that "if the drivers are as fair and honest and transparent as they are, then we are improving the situation". But are they really playing fair? Leclerc passed Vettel for the lead in Bahrain against a clear order not to do so, early in the race. It was such an odd attempt to control the situation that even Vettel, in theory the aggrieved party, said afterwards that Leclerc had done the right thing.

Then there was the qualifying situation in Italy, which infuriated Vettel and meant Leclerc had to earn the team's forgiveness. Then Singapore, where Ferrari opted not to reverse the positions once Vettel had leapfrogged Leclerc on strategy. Then Russia...

Vettel's transgression in Russia was comfortably the most blatant example of Ferrari's team orders backfiring this year. There have been other cases where Ferrari's mistake has been to dither in implementing them. The mishandling of how to manage Vettel and Leclerc has been one of the prime offences.

But Leclerc, darling of the media as he might be, has also not been holier-than-thou. Is that not undermining Ferrari's end goal? Are the drivers really being fair?

"No, I think somehow they are fair," counters Binotto. "They are trying to get the best for themselves, which is normal and obvious. It's something we as a team need to understand and to prevent."

That is an interesting idea. And it's not a slip of the tongue. Binotto seems to have adopted a firm position that getting the drivers to be out-and-out team players is Ferrari's best option, however hard it may be - and reliant on the drivers playing fair, even though he also knows full well they will be trying to fight for their individual best interests too.

"What's important for them is to be animals, because that's the best way to be really aggressive and fast in the race weekend," says Binotto. "It's important for the team to be aware of that, try to prevent it.

"Then I think it's a matter of fairness between the drivers and the team, which is important. But that's part of the discussion to have."

Binotto reckons that's a "nice problem" to have as team principal and seems wedded to the idea of taking the rough with the smooth.

But dialling out the individual interests of both drivers is a Herculean task: Vettel is a four-time world champion who, in his pomp, was as ruthless as Michael Schumacher or Ayrton Senna. Leclerc is a hungry young star, emboldened by unrelenting success in junior categories.

It's not the same challenge as Toto Wolff has at Mercedes, where Lewis Hamilton has established a consistent edge over Valtteri Bottas. And Christian Horner has it easy at Red Bull, with Verstappen unchallenged by Pierre Gasly and, since the summer break, Alex Albon.

How is Ferrari meant to truly get its two egos under control? At some point, does it give up? Does Ferrari have to pick a #1? According to Binotto, it already has. "It's Ferrari," he says. "Ferrari is the #1 in Ferrari. That's what counts for us. The priority is given to the team. Especially in this part of the season.

"I think both drivers understand. We are conscious of the importance of the drivers as individuals to do their own job and try to win, but as a team, I think we can try to manage the situation to the benefit overall."

Binotto thinks that Ferrari's peak can be higher if it manages its drivers. Perhaps the real gain is that the troughs would be lower if it didn't

Leclerc said after Sochi that he still trusts Vettel. That statement triggered doubts. It seemed either naive - which Leclerc demonstrably is not - or dishonest, simply toeing the party line in public.

But maybe there's a third option. Maybe Leclerc has no choice but to trust Vettel. If Ferrari is insistent on this strategy being the way forward, the situation is not going to change any time soon. Leclerc may be the future, but Vettel is still arguably the driver who carries more weight.

If neither is going anywhere at the end of the year and Ferrari will continue to operate in this manner, it may be that acknowledging one's place in the system is the best short-term option.

"The top priority is the team," says Binotto. "I think it's proper that both drivers act in the benefit of the team."

There, Binotto's position is hardly controversial or unusual. No team boss wants their drivers to undermine the wider effort. As Binotto has made emphatically clear though, Ferrari is actively spurning the "easier" choice to take no action and let the drivers race - it wants to go further than that and prevent the risk even arising. Maybe the only way to accept the decision is to view it from that perspective.

Binotto thinks that Ferrari's peak can be higher if it manages its drivers. Perhaps the real gain is that the troughs would be lower if it didn't. Allowing Vettel and Leclerc to go at it might be easiest on the pitwall, but the complications would come later. If they were let off the leash, the flashpoints risk being much more dramatic and damaging than a few radio rants and difficult questions.

As soon as it committed to trying to control its drivers, Ferrari chose a difficult path to tread. But if Binotto's right, he might just have an ace up his sleeve: the strongest driver line-up among the leading teams, and the compliance of those drivers to work together to obliterate the opposition, regardless of which one of them finishes first.

The problem Ferrari has is that this season has had more examples of the risks associated with that strategy than the rewards. That needs to change for next season. Ferrari's entire team dynamic may depend on it.