Why Leclerc getting biggest Dutch GP call right is important for Ferrari's F1 future

"I don't regret that late call."

Charles Leclerc was speaking to the media mid-Dutch Grand Prix, his race ended after 41 frustrating laps. His rivals were charging onward towards the late red flag stoppage, but even in his absence, Leclerc had become one of the biggest talking points of the weekend.

After his Q3 crash, Leclerc had started ninth and was chasing Red Bull’s Sergio Perez when the pair both dived for the pitlane the first time by at the start. The rain was coming down ever harder and both made the same bold decision.

PLUS: How Verstappen defied home pressure and two downpours to win Dutch GP

Leclerc informed Ferrari of his choice as he was racing into the short Zandvoort pitlane, with engineer Xavier Marcos Padros initially trying to explain Ferrari’s position on the rain’s predicted intensity before quickly accepting his charge was already heading towards the garage.

There, once he’d parked up, Leclerc was left looking at his crew still scrambling to get intermediate tyres out – Perez long gone from Red Bull’s latest slick service. It was terrible optics for Ferrari once again, following its various botched pitstops and strategy calls since the start of its resurgence last year.

But the next time Leclerc took Tarzan on the racing line, he was swinging out of the long, right-hand opening hairpin with polesitter Max Verstappen exiting the pits just ahead. The pair swiftly carved their way past Logan Sargeant, Lewis Hamilton and Lando Norris – all still out on slicks.

Although he’d been held for around 10 extra seconds in Ferrari’s pitbox, the decision to pit when he did had been entirely correct.

Leclerc's inspired pit call was dented by Ferrari botching his tyre change

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

From there, though, a miserable eventuality played out for Leclerc, as he fell from running fifth in Verstappen’s wake to his retirement from 16th. Because a small mistake – utterly understandable and common in wet conditions with the pack bunched from the grid start – had already hampered Leclerc’s Zandvoort Sunday even before his early inters stop gains.

This was a lap one oversteer snap exiting Turn 12 travelling through the track’s stadium section at the end of the back straight. It sent Leclerc sideways into McLaren’s Oscar Piastri, who had nipped ahead through the preceding Turn 9 before the Ferrari driver’s tenacity got him back alongside as they braked for the short Turn 11 right.

Piastri gave Leclerc room as the issue was forced upon him, but the close race pack grouping resulted in contact seconds later, as Leclerc had to correct his SF-23’s sudden movement right on the damp track.

“It was a very late call – he was in the pitlane when he told us – but at the end, even if he lost seven or eight seconds in the pitlane, it was a good one. It was a good choice to stop at that point” Fred Vasseur

Leclerc’s pace after the safety car period that followed Sargeant’s crash was rather alarming.

Not only was it erratic, but he never matched team-mate Carlos Sainz in the 1m16s (for comparison here leader Verstappen was lapping in the mid-1m15s). And as Leclerc dropped down the order he got passed by Nico Hulkenberg, even losing touch with the race-pace-limited Haas as its pace reached the 1m16s.

Eventually, debutant Liam Lawson caught and passed, with Leclerc briefly fighting back having stayed close to the AlphaTauri into the longer DRS zone down the main straight next time by. One lap later Leclerc was retired, the rain he and Ferrari had been hoping for still up in the North Sea clouds.

Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur explained after the race that the Piastri clash had “damaged the right-hand endplate” of Leclerc’s front wing and that it “went into the floor and damaged the bottom of the floor”.

A small mistake in tricky conditions damaged Leclerc's floor and forced him out of the race

Photo by: Erik Junius

Ferrari initially told Leclerc this was costing him “five to 10 points” of downforce load, per the driver, which then ballooned to “more than 60, and more than 60 is a different category”. This loss works out as roughly two seconds per lap.

The lap one pitstop decision was ultimately the highlight of Leclerc’s race. Yet because of the long pitstop, it led to some F1 observers heaping criticism on the Monegasque. But this is well off the mark for two reasons.

Insight: 10 things we learned from the 2023 Dutch GP

The first is, simply, he was entirely right to make that call. Vasseur agreed, saying “[It] looked a bit strange from outside but it was a very good call for me”.

Vasseur added: “It was a very late call – he was in the pitlane when he told us – but at the end, even if he lost seven or eight seconds in the pitlane, it was a good one. It was a good choice to stop at that point.”

The second important point concerns how throughout Ferrari’s run of struggles with strategy decisions, Leclerc has typically been passive in going along with his team’s calls.

He has questioned them on many occasions but has shown little of the Sainz’s decisiveness in seemingly calling many of his own shots. This earned Sainz his Monaco 2022 podium and reflects the Spaniard’s position as a very intelligent driver.

But Leclerc took his destiny into his own hands in pitting when he did during the first Zandvoort shower and he deserves praise for his bravery, not criticism.

Leclerc deserves credit for his brave pit call, even if he didn't gain anything from it

Photo by: Ferrari

Only Ferrari being better “optimised”, as he put it, would’ve avoided the unfortunate pitlane delays scenes. But even this was a minor saga given the mitigating circumstances of the unexpected heavy intensity of the rain and the short pitlane length reducing the time the Scuderia had to react.

But the team should still reflect that if Red Bull and Alpine, for Pierre Gasly at the same time, could do it, Ferrari should’ve done likewise.

Overall, the Dutch GP was indeed a tricky weekend for Leclerc. If his team let him down early in the race, he did so with his Q3 crash – another oversteer snap as he traversed the tricky, quick Turn 9 sending him into the barriers. It was simply just over the line in terms of corner speed for the drying conditions.

Now heading to Ferrari’s home ground following such a tricky weekend for the team, the pressure is going to be even higher than ever

The Piastri clash must go down as another error, but it wasn’t proportionate to the ensuing fallout in terms of how the damaged endplate eventually wreaked havoc on the critical floor venturi tunnels and the car’s pace potential. And Leclerc played the team game in waving Sainz by just before the switch back to slicks once the Spaniard had roared up behind.

Sainz had “one of my best drives of the season” at Zandvoort, where he estimated Ferrari was “the sixth-fastest car”.

This was essentially down to its set-up choice in avoiding its highest downforce package – against expectations at what is basically an all-corners track. Vasseur said this was exacerbated by the changing weather conditions all weekend, which Ferrari has struggled with all year.

The peaky SF-23 is simply “better in standard conditions and more consistent conditions”, Vasseur explained.

The 2023 Ferrari is better-suited to "standard conditions"

Photo by: Erik Junius

But it left Ferrari’s drivers having “zero idea whether I'm going to have huge understeer, huge oversteer” when arriving at corner entries, per Leclerc, in qualifying. And in the race, Sainz was hampered following rivals through the various technical sections of the short layout – he didn’t have the downforce wing level to keep up.

It has been noted before in 2023 that given Ferrari’s struggles and his disappointment at not being in the title hunt this year, Leclerc has returned to the overdriving excesses that characterised his 2020 campaign when the red cars were unexpectedly down on power. After fine drives in Austria, Hungary and Spa before the summer break, that feeling has returned.

But when Leclerc is happy and his car is predictable, he is devastatingly fast.

Now heading to Ferrari’s home ground following such a tricky weekend for the team, the pressure is going to be even higher than ever. Helpfully, the aerodynamic balance requirements will swing back to the low-downforce arrangement that boosted Ferrari and Leclerc at Spa.

His Monaco qualifying speed also demonstrates that the package should ride the kerbs and slow-speed chicanes at the ‘Temple of Speed’ well enough.

The cancellation of the Imola event means the Tifosi have had an unexpectedly long wait to cheer the red cars in the carbon fibre flesh in 2023. But following Zandvoort, a clean weekend for both Leclerc and Ferrari overall should be the primary focus. The key test will be staying on course even as the pressure of expectation builds on home soil.

But, longer term, Leclerc taking a bold strategy decision on his own can only be a positive for Ferrari. It should breed confidence, as well as get the team to ensure its processes can cope should the situation on lap one at Zandvoort ever be repeated. Although the fallout from his Piastri contact led to a race of misery, the choice to aggressively take command of a situation as Leclerc did doesn’t show a demotivated driver waiting for a better 2024 car. It shows what good can come of Leclerc going with his instincts.

It might not matter in 2023. But if Ferrari can produce a better package allied with a consistent and fast Leclerc, their potential clearly still hasn’t been reached.

Ferrari and Leclerc's potential has far from been reached yet

Photo by: Erik Junius