Ferrari has achieved this season a car capable of taking poles and winning races on a regular basis, but has reached the first half of the course far behind Red Bull and Max Verstappen due to different factors.
As well as reliability , the team has failed at certain points, and recently we have seen cases where the drivers have to take charge of the strategy during qualifying and the race.
In the British GP, Sainz disobeyed the Scuderia, who asked him to let Leclerc escape behind the safety car to stop the drivers who came behind. The man from Madrid unleashed his historic ‘stop inventing’ [‘stop inventing’] and took the victory, proving that he was right.
Last weekend, in France, Ferrari admitted that it was the drivers who decided how and where to slipstream so that Leclerc could get pole position , and on Sunday, we again saw Carlos having to correct the wall twice. pits, first when he was told he had a five-second stop and go and then when he was asked to stop when he was attacking Sergio Pérez.
Finally Sainz could only be fifth, the day that Leclerc made a big mistake when he was leading the race and ended up having an accident. And on Sky Sports F1 ‘s Any Driven Monday, Damon Hill discussed the two Ferrari drivers.
“I feel like Carlos [Sainz] is more of a team leader,” the 1996 world champion said of Sainz. “He seems to be more strategic and capable of making decisions. Charles [Leclerc] is clearly fast and probably faster than Carlos in the team.”
“But in terms of communications in the pits, they are still halfway there. They are never close to where they need to be. Someone has to take responsibility and say: ‘we are going to make this decision’. It is the driver or the strategy engineer. .
Hill believes that Ferrari has the car and team to fight with everything despite the points distance, and, like Binotto, he does not believe that the title is already decided. Of course, he warns that something must change: “Ferrari’s potential is enormous. If they can solve these problems, they are a threat. If they can do it between now and the end of the season, it could be a very close championship.”
After the Hungarian GP this weekend will come the summer break, after which there will only be nine races left. Leaving the Hungaroring with a great result would be a good accolade for Cavallino ‘s men ahead of the second half of the World Cup, but losing even more ground would sit like a jug of cold water ahead of the holidays.
