The 2022 Formula 1 Singapore Grand Prix was very difficult for the teams, especially for Ferrari who had all the pressure after taking a great pole position with Charles Leclerc. Those from Maranello hoped to win on the streets of Marina Bay, but two moments marked the fate of the event.
At the moment the traffic lights went out, the driver in first place skidded and that allowed his closest rival, Sergio Pérez, to take the lead, but that was not all, since at the pit stops, The Monegasque made a mistake when pressing hard on the brake pedal, which caused the mechanics to take longer and the undercut to be ineffective.
The head of strategy for the Prancing Horse , Iñaki Rueda , explained in an extensive video uploaded to the LinkedIn profile how the race went and why they lost the victory: “We had a lot, a lot of rain before the race, and the start was delayed an hour “.
“Race Direction preferred to start with the intermediate tires instead of starting behind the safety car, and all the cars selected those tires because it was the fastest on wet asphalt,” said the Spanish engineer. “When the lights went out, Charles [Leclerc] had a poor start, and he was overtaken by Checo [Perez], from that moment we tried to get back to the first position.”
“On the other side we had Carlos [Sainz], who made a great start, and managed to pass Lewis Hamilton, so we were already third,” Rueda said of his compatriot on the most successful team in history.
Ferrari’s strategy , from that moment, focused on the change to slicks, since the Marina Bay track was going to give everyone opportunities if it dried up: “The key moment in Singapore was the change to dry tires, we had the intermediates, but no more rain was expected, but the asphalt was drying very slowly, there is no wind or sun, and there is a lot of humidity, something that we have already seen in the past.
“We had some Safety Cars and Virtual Safety Cars which gave us the opportunity to make a quicker stop, but the circuit wasn’t dry so we couldn’t put the slicks on,” he said. “Around lap 33 or 34, we started to see Russell [already on the dry compounds], who was matching our times in the third sector, and we wanted to bet, we hoped to put Red Bull under pressure and be the first to stop. “.
“Charles was the first of the guys above to do it, and on lap 34 we put the dry tires on, and they were the medium ones, because we wanted to get to the end of the race. When he stopped, he locked the wheels and went wide, something that caused the mechanics of the guns to move, that’s why our stop was slower than we wanted”, agreed Rueda about his pilot. “We tried to undercut Red Bull, but with the stop being so slow, Perez had no problem recovering on that lap.”
However, they still had their other member with options to get back on the podium to savor champagne for two for the first time since the Miami Grand Prix in May: “With Carlos we thought of doing something similar, we had no pressure behind, nor anyone to squeeze from the front, but on lap 35 we thought it would be better to put the dry ones on him to make him go faster until the end, that’s why we stopped him one lap after Charles and we put the mediums on him “.
Despite not being able to beat Red Bull in the pitstops, a crash midway through the event allowed the Monegasque to get closer to Checo: “On lap 36, we saw that Tsunoda had an accident with the dry tires and a Safety Car came out, that he compacted the whole race and restarted. At that point we were all on slicks and the track wasn’t quite dry.”
“Charles put a lot of pressure on Perez, and on lap 43 Race Direction allowed DRS to be used, so with that we got closer. That gave him a boost over the next 10 laps,” continued Ferrari’s head of strategy. . “There, Charles wore out his tires, and we could see that Perez didn’t, so he was able to open a gap on him.”
“Carlos had pressure from Norris after the safety car, but a few laps later he was able to open up a cushion and finished third,” explained Rueda, before looking ahead to the next grand prix at Suzuka. “We go home with a second and third position, a result we probably didn’t expect after pole position, but some good points for the team. Now we travel to Japan this week.
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