Charles Leclerc has challenged Ferrari to learn from Red Bull to improve its Formula 1 race strategies after an unsuccessful tyre gamble at the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia.
The Ferrari driver and team-mate Lewis Hamilton started Sunday’s mixed-weather race on soft tyres, as opposed to the intermediates used by Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and Isack Hadjar.
But it quickly backfired as Leclerc and Hamilton respectively dropped from fourth and second to last and 15th, with the Monegasque pitting at the end of a damp lap one.
Ferrari and its race strategies have been a long-running topic as, although it often gets it right, there’s been many times it hasn’t, with the fallout being heightened at F1’s biggest team.
Red Bull on the other hand is operationally very sharp, led by chief strategist Hannah Schmitz, and Sepang saw Verstappen claim his 72nd grand prix victory after starting on pole.
“I was aligned with the team,” revealed Leclerc. “It was a close call as it is always in these conditions and we’ll speak whether to split the cars in those conditions is the best possible way.
Charles Leclerc, Ferrari
Photo by: Alex Bierens de Haan / LAT Images via Getty Images
“But it’s also true that when you split the cars, by definition there’s one very wrong choice and one very good choice and it’s very difficult to have an in-between scenario where both scenarios kind of pans out the same.
“So we thought we were doing the right thing obviously, but clearly there’s one team in particular – and that is Red Bull – that gets it right most of the time with both cars.
“For that we need to understand what they are doing better than we do.”
Ferrari was one of six teams to have started on slick tyres, but only it and Alpine opted to not split strategy between their drivers, with Pierre Gasly and Franco Colapinto also on softs.
It was one of those tricky situations in which rain had fallen but the track was starting to dry, and come lap 13, the rest of the grid had ditched the inters for the remainder of the race.
“It’s very difficult, it was the same for everybody,” added Leclerc. “I think even though we had a bit of data on our side, it’s in conditions that have nothing to do with the conditions we had today.
“So yeah, it was based on intuition, on looking at the ground, and the surface looked pretty dry.
Sepang race start
Photo by: Srinivasa Krishnan
“The thing is that the biggest question mark we’ve had is how much water there is in the holes of the tarmac, and there was a lot more water than I think the majority thought there was, and that’s why the slick ended up being the wrong decision.”
Hamilton and Leclerc still eventually recovered to third and fourth, though that was helped by George Russell retiring with five laps left due to a power unit failure on his Mercedes.
“Our end result is quite representative from where we would have hoped to finish,” said Leclerc. “Kimi [Antonelli] and Max were just too strong for us today and we were right after and we finished P3, P4.
“But it’s been a strange race. I think everything that could have gone wrong at the first part of the race went wrong and everything that could have gone right in the second part of the race went right.
“At the end of the day, both extremes balanced each other out and we are finishing where we should have finished. But it’s been a bit more of a sweaty race than what I would have hoped.”
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