Ferrari Silverstone
Ferrari Silverstone
The British Grand Prix was a tough weekend for the tifosi to judge, on one hand Carlos Sainz finally won a race for himself. And on the other, most of them feel like the team’s strategy had sabotaged Charles Leclerc’s chances at climbing back up the drivers’ standings and taking the fight to the Red Bull drivers. And then we have this scene of team boss Mattia wagging his finger at Charles for everyone in the world to see.
So. what was Ferrari thinking during the safety car? And what did Mattia say to Charles in that finger-wagging moment? Well, you’re going to have to stick around to find out. But before we get going, consider subscribing as we upload 4 times a week at the very least, just to keep you updated on the latest news in the F1 space.
We all know by now that Ferrari has the tendency to “fumble the bag” if you will with many race wins lost to poor decision making. And this past weekend was no different, atleast in the case of Charles. From letting Charles hang behind Sainz for too long that gave Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton the chance to catch up, to deciding not pit Charles under the safety car and throwing away their chance of another 1-2 finish.
While in the past Charles would let his emotions and frustrations get the best of him, this weekend at Silverstone would be different as he would remain “politically correct” or PC as they would say in his interviews after the race. In his postrace interview he would say:
“I don’t want to comment now, I want to discuss it and have the full view with the team what the reason was. Obviously I felt personally I was very strong in the first part of the race and that I lost a little bit of time – whether this would have changed the end result, I don’t think it would have, but just for the future we need to check everything.
The media would also ask Charles about the finger-wagging incident everyone saw between Mattia and him. Charles would say that Mattia was only trying to cheer him up but he said it was not enough saying:
“He tried, but then of course the disappointment is big for me, it’s been a rollercoaster of a race. The first lap I broke the front wing, and then I thought that was over, there was quite a lot of understeer. Then I managed to play around with my toggles and managed to have a bit more a strong front, and then the pace came back and we were very strong. And then the win was feeling more and more possible, and then obviously the safety car and that was it. It’s frustrating.”
He would also comment on Sainz maiden win in F1 saying:
Of course, and I think this is an important point. As much as I am disappointed on my side I don’t think this should be a headline on what is an amazing first victory for Carlos. It’s a dream come true I think. Whenever you are a child, you dream of this moment, and especially with Ferrari, so he needs to enjoy. It’s his day. and hopefully next time it will be my day.”
The media would ask Mattia about what he had said to Charles at the moment we all saw. He would reply with:
First, I knew that he was disappointed and frustrated, which is understandable because he was leading clearly the race and he was comfortable going very fast at the time when the safety car came out,” Binotto said. “And for him today was a great opportunity in terms of the championship because he was leading while Max had some problems. So then the safety car came out and he had a difficult, let me say, end [to] the race and no doubt that he was disappointed. So when I met him, I knew he was disappointed. But what I told him is you did a fantastic race once again, because you did a fantastic first lap of the race battling.
Now the next head-scratching moment for everyone was Ferrari’s decision not to pit Charles. This decision left Charles vulnerable at the restart of the race as everyone behind him were able to pit and change to new sets of softs. And to add on to that, his own teammate Carlos Sainz was smelling blood in the water with Charles restarting the race on an old set of hards and later on decided to take matters into his own hands even though he was instructed to wall off the other teams from Charles.
Obviously, everyone in the world especially the media would want to understand what Mattia and the team were thinking. And Mattia would answer these questions by saying:
“What happened was our two cars were too close to stop both of them, so we had to take a decision [on which one to stop]. We were the only one with two cars fighting for good positions, the other teams had one car and certainly the decisions are a lot easier. In our case, we had the two cars and there was not a sufficient gap to stop both of them because the second would have lost time at the pit stop and fallen back. So why then by deciding to stop one did we stop Carlos? Because Charles had the track position and was leading, so he would have remained the leader of the race. Because his tyres were fresher than the ones of Carlos, I think six or seven laps less than the ones of Carlos had and in better shape. And Carlos by stopping and still being second, he would have stopped the others, at least in the first couple of corners when we knew starting on the hard [tyre] would be the most difficult. So that was the reason we decided. And then we were hoping for more tyre degradation on the soft to give Charles maybe a difficult three or four laps initially but recovering later on, but the soft didn’t degrade as we were hoping.”
Mattia would also be asked on whether or not he thinks the team may have missed out on the opportunity to give Charles a chance to gain ground on drivers’ standings leader Max Verstappen who struggled throughout the race with bodywork damage to his RB18. To his Mattia would reply with:
“What would they have done then differently? I think the decision we took was the right one, the proper one, each single time. Should we have stopped at the Safety Car is maybe the only one we are questioning, I think. If we would have stopped him maybe the others would have stayed out and he would have maybe been fourth on soft tyres. On the other side, would he have been able to recover the position? Not sure. I think that obviously with hindsight it’s easy to say that we could have done [something] differently. Once again we have a Safety Car at the wrong moment when we are leading the race comfortably.”
And while we could all hear Sainz arguing with his race engineer before the restart of the race, Sainz would tell the media that he believed that the team handled the whole race perfectly saying:
“Honestly, I think today the team managed the race really well, I have nothing [bad] to say. At one point we switched positions when we were at risk of losing positions, of getting overcut by Lewis. I think we did it and executed it perfectly. And then they asked me to do this 10 metres thing and I tried to explain I have behind me probably the fastest man on track today, if I drop back 10 metres, I might lose a bit of a slipstream and if he passes me, Charles is going to be dead meat also. So my decision was to get into the lead as soon as possible, I knew I could be in the lead before Turn 6 with the grip I had on the softs and go from there and try not to affect his race by getting into the lead. I said to the team – ‘leave it with me – I’m going to [take] the lead as clean as possible.”
And while this may have been a case of disobedience resulting in a great result, Mattia would bite his lip and praise Sainz in ignoring team orders saying:
Not only is it OK, but I am very happy with what Carlos did today, because for example when we asked him earlier to swap positions [with Leclerc earlier in the race], he did that with no discussion. When we told him to give a space to Charles after the restart, what he said was not that he didn’t want to do it, he said the guys behind me would be very aggressive, so I need to protect and somehow try to react, so leave it to me. So I think he understood properly what the intention was and I think he not only understood but I think he is very good with the way he was acting and I am very happy with this.”
Even now that we have clarifications as to what Ferrari was thinking during the safety car restart, it feels as though Ferrari have always chosen Charles to take the unnecessary hit for the team. This first happened in Monaco where Charles was in position to win his home race but that wouldn’t come to fruition by fault of the team’s strategy.
But even so, Charles is only 49 points behind Max Verstappen now as we speak, and if anything, being the fast car out there on damaged wings is a good sign for what Charles can produce with a full and stable set up. But what do you think? Was this as frustrating as Monaco? Or was it even worse? Let us know in the comment section below and as always, don’t forget to like and subscribe to the channel if you haven’t!
