How Ferrari Botched Their Strategy With Charles Leclerc & Carlos Sainz Before the Race Even Started

The trend of poor Ferrari strategy and heartbreaks for the Tifosi was extended for another weekend. The Hungarian GP joined the long and growing list of weekends where the Scuderia held themselves back. Starting the race at P2 and P3, the Ferrari men, Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc, crossed the finish line at P4 and P6, respectively.

The poor strategy from the Italian camp took the limelight yet again during the 70 laps on the Hungaroring. F1 analyst Sam Collins had time to look at the Ferrari strategic calls and elaborate on the calls that lost them the race.

Discussing the strategy, Collins gave us an insight into the tire strategy right before the start of the race. “It all really started before the race had even got underway,” said Collins.

“Charles Leclerc was thinking about starting the race in a different way as well. But Ferrari decided to start the race on mediums and that turned out to be a bit of a mistake. When those tire blankets cafe off and they saw Mercedes on soft tires, they say McLarens on soft tires and of course they saw the Red Bulls on soft tires, I wonder if it had started to dawn on Ferrari that they’d done something wrong,” he added.

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Although, starting the race on medium compound tires was not the worst call the Scuderia made. It was the poor strategic call during the race that really sank their and specifically Leclerc’s ship as Collins elaborates.

F1 teach analyst points out exactly where Ferrari went wrong

Sam Collins discussed the pit stop strategy and explained the two stops for teams starting on medium, i.e. Ferrari. However, the Italian outfit’s bizarre pit stop strategy with Leclerc confused everyone, including Collins.

“Ferrari came in and bolted on a set of hard tires,” he said. And added, “But it was clear immediately that there was no temperature in those hard tires — those hard tires were like driving on ice”

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Ferrari saw the hard compounds not work for Alpine, but went ahead with it anyway. It would be safe to say that Ferrari needs to pull up their socks if they still wish to be a part of the championship run.