F1 | Ferrari’s crisis also drags Leclerc to the bottom

Ferrari is licking its wounds. Given how the Silverstone weekend had gone, a solid Carlos Sainz’s fifth place finish was the best the Scuderia could hope for, a performance-wise result that was also helped by George Russell’s retirement.

The SF-24 ‘Imola’ version did what it could, Sainz interpreted the various phases of a difficult race very well, building his final result precisely in the passages between slick-intermediate-slick. It was not realistically possible to aspire to anything more, overall the pace confirmed by Mercedes, Red Bull and McLaren was in line with expectations, or impossible for Sainz and Leclerc.

The Monegasque deserves a separate analysis. It is clear that this is not a good moment for Charles, some misadventures have also been favored by circumstances, but in the last four races several errors have been seen. Today at Silverstone Leclerc was the author of an excellent start that allowed him to recover three positions, then his comeback had a first stop behind Lance Stroll.

Charles managed to pass the Aston Martin on lap 13 and now Sainz was ahead of him, with a gap of five seconds. Over the next five laps Leclerc lost ground to his teammate and when the first drops of rain began to fall he asked the team to switch to intermediate tyres. The pit wall gave the okay, but Charles’ input proved to be wrong. Leclerc’s chances of finishing sixth ended at that point.

The scenario is complex. Either Leclerc misread the conditions (Sainz and Hamilton at the same time confirmed that the track was still slick) or it was a call born out of the frustration of someone who does not accept that he can aim for a sixth position as a best result.
“It’s clear now that it wasn’t the right call,” commented Frederic Vasseur, “and maybe it was due to being ten seconds behind Carlos. I think Charles saw in that call the chance to get back into the fight for the podium, but I’m not angry about that. On the lap Charles stopped, Hamilton went wide at Turn 1, Russell went wide at Turn 1, another car went wide at Turn 15 and it could have been a good call. When you’re in the leading group you don’t take any risks, you choose based on the decisions of your direct rivals, but if you’re behind it’s different.”

Ferrari leaves Silverstone with the worst stage haul after the double retirement in Montreal. Second place in the Constructors’ standings is still in the hands of the Scuderia thanks also to the strategic errors made by McLaren, which nevertheless rose to -7.

Carlos Sainz, Ferrari SF-24

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

Vasseur’s interpretation of the weekend is that of a necessary sacrifice to understand what is not working in the “Barcelona” package. “There are no tests,” he stressed, “we cannot go around to understand and solve the problems except during the race weekends. It is very difficult as a team to sacrifice the free practice sessions on Friday because you know you will have to recover, and in this perspective the rain that fell in the FP3 session on Saturday morning did not help us.”

The week off before leaving for Budapest will be very useful to take stock of the situation in Maranello. Silverstone should have clarified what needs to be saved in the Barcelona package and what aspects need to be corrected. In the meantime, however, time is running out and the opponents are closing in. The announced overtaking by McLaren is now imminent, but the threat of Mercedes is also starting to materialize on the horizon.