“It’s a difficult period. I don’t have the words to explain it, but these last four races have been worse than a nightmare. I hope we can get back on the right track soon.” Charles Leclerc’s thoughts at the end of the British Grand Prix sum up a difficult moment that, after his victory in Monte Carlo, saw him clash with unlucky episodes and a declining technical situation.
In Canada, the difficulties of the Reds were combined with reliability problems, in Spain the first problems related to the new package emerged, in Austria a contact put him out of the game after just a few corners and, finally, in Great Britain many elements made the weekend more complicated than hoped.
The British weekend was conditioned by technical shortcomings that undermined not only the Prancing Horse, but also the Monegasque himself. When the situation becomes more complex, sometimes you tend to take some risks to try to overturn a situation that seems already sealed: this partly explains some of Leclerc’s choices at Silverstone, with a race conditioned by uncertain weather. One of these choices was the switch to intermediates wanted by the Monegasque at a critical moment of the race, when it had already started to rain in the first sector: let’s find out how the decision came about.
Charles Leclerc, Ferrari SF-24
Photo by: Ferrari
First signs of rain
To understand the reason for the Ferrari driver’s pit stop, we need to go back a few laps, more precisely around lap 16, when the arrival of the rain seemed almost imminent. Listening to the team radio, during that same lap the track engineer had explained to Leclerc how, according to the radar data, the rain would soon arrive with heavy intensity, before adding that, however, that downpour would only last two or three laps, and then stop: “This heavy rain should last two or three laps, then it will stop, then maybe more rain”.
In fact, both the Prancing Horse and other teams expected two rain cells, the first of which was imminent, interspersed with a calmer phase. The same information was in fact also reported to Sainz, with the difference that, for personal preferences, the intensity of the rain in his case was coded by color and not by class, as for other drivers: “Between one lap, rain of intensity from green to yellow, it will last 2-3 laps”. The Spaniard immediately took action, starting to ask for precise references on the intensity, also in order to compare his sensations on the track to what the radar indications would have been.
The arrival of rain was in fact imminent, with the first cell expected to hit the third sector and, more specifically, the pit lane area. Listening to the conversations, Sainz had been told that the intensity would increase would increase precisely in the third sector on the following lap, switching to yellow.
Indeed, as forecast, rain began to fall during the 17th lap, prompting the track engineers to immediately inform the drivers of the conditions they would find in the final split time, so as not to arrive unprepared. Leclerc was in fact told to pay attention to turn 15, as it would be wet when he arrived: a message also referred to his teammate, who, at the request of the Spanish driver himself, was not only confirmed to have the intensity at the “yellow-green” level, indicating that it was indeed raining, but also that the weather alert referred only to the third sector and not to other parts of the track.
Charles Leclerc, Ferrari SF-24
Photo by: Erik Junius
First thoughts on a possible pit stop
In the case of the Monegasque, the first thoughts about a possible pit stop came around the eighteenth lap, the one before he returned to the pits. At Ferrari they expected the rain in the pit lane area to last between three and four laps: information transmitted to both drivers at the start of the eighteenth lap and, in fact, which was then reconfirmed to both Leclerc and Sainz at a later stage of that same lap, warning them once again about the risk deriving from the rain in the final split time.
The problem, in fact, was that at that stage the rain was limited to the pit lane area only, especially in the third sector, and not to the central one, which was still dry. Going back over Leclerc’s team radios, in fact, before arriving at turn six, Leclerc’s track engineer had suggested that, at that specific stage, the times indicated that the right tyre was still the slick, with a crossover towards the intermediate estimated at around 1’40”, much higher than those that the drivers were recording at that moment.
During that same lap, however, the rain began to become really heavy, once again only in the area around the pit lane; not enough to justify a stop for the intermediate, but enough to start to cause difficulties for the drivers. The Monegasque driver immediately noticed this increase in rain in that area after running the Copse, suggesting that the intensity had reached level 2-3 and that this situation would last about ten minutes.
Precisely on the basis of that information, and on the sensations on the track, towards the end of the lap it was Leclerc himself who warned the pits to be ready for a possible stop, a sign that the Monegasque was thinking of returning on the next lap.
Charles Leclerc, Ferrari SF-24
Photo by: Erik Junius
The Pit Stop Lap
The arrival of rain around the pit lane area put several drivers in trouble, so much so that at the start of the nineteenth lap the first long runs were seen, such as those of the two Mercedes in turns 1-2. Even Leclerc himself, who was having trouble with his tires, made a mistake when braking for turn three, missing the apex, an element that pushed him to call a pit stop. In fact, immediately after crossing the finish line, the track engineer had confirmed to him that the intensity he would find in that area would be the highest of this first cell, lasting about ten minutes.
However, those indications referred only to the pit area, so much so that Leclerc himself after the Copse questioned his decision to pit: “Wait a second before pitting because part of the track is still completely dry”. However, after having covered the stretch, he changed his mind once again, confirming the return to the pits to fit the intermediate.
In Sainz’s case, the only somewhat different indication was on the duration of the rain, indicating another 2 laps with that intensity before a reduction, which was in fact in line with the indications given previously that, after that cell, there would be a period of calm.
Did the mid-day break make sense?
To answer this question, it is also essential to understand the context in which the pit stop came about. From the moment Leclerc overtook Stroll on lap 13, when the track was still completely dry, the Ferrari driver struggled to keep up with his teammate, with the gap starting to widen even more significantly when the rain began to fall. From just over four seconds at the start of lap 14, that gap widened to around six seconds after four laps, before rising to a full fourteen seconds by the time the Monegasque pitted.
Charles Leclerc, Ferrari SF-24
Photo by: Ferrari
An extension of the gap that finds its answer in the difficulties encountered by Leclerc in managing the rear tyres at the limit, as he himself confirmed via radio on the re-entry lap, underlining excessive sliding. In fact, the choice to re-enter makes sense when, in fact, the nineteenth lap was the most critical in terms of intensity of the rain, so much so that it pushed several drivers into error. If we add to this the fact that Leclerc was having difficulty with the tyres, increasing that feeling of slipperiness, from this perspective it becomes easier to understand why they arrived at the gamble of the intermediate. To have an additional reference, it is interesting to look at the times: while other drivers, like Sainz, in the central sector lapped in 40”, Leclerc’s time in that section rose to 43”. It is clear that the choice then did not work, costing around 100 seconds in total, but at least it makes sense in the attempt to achieve something more than a seventh place.
This leads to the next question: why didn’t the intermediate work? As anticipated to the drivers a few laps earlier (not only to the Ferrari drivers), it was expected that after the first rain cell there would be a period of “calm”, which would be followed by a second shower that would push towards the intermediate tyres, as indeed happened. However, this was not the only reason that pushed many drivers, except for those for whom it made sense to risk and gamble, to stay on the track.
Even looking at the messages from race direction, the most critical sector of the track has always been the final one, around the pit lane area. As reported by Leclerc himself on the in-lap, in fact, other areas of the track were still effectively dry, including the central split time, the most demanding one for the tyres, given the presence of so many fast corners that transmit energy to the tyres. Although it is true that the intensity of the rain decreased near the pit lane, it was the fact that the track was still dry in the central sector that put the intermediate tyres in crisis, destroying them. In fact, the rest of the group only started to come back in when the times rose significantly in the central sector, the most critical one.
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