The 2019 Singapore Grand Prix began with Suderia Ferrari Monegasque driver Charles Leclerc leading Lewis Hamilton and teammate Sebastian Vettel from pole position. As Charles explained afterwards, the Maranello team’s tactics at this stage were to run a deliberately slow pace. This kept the field bunched up tightly behind them, leaving no gaps for their rivals to make a pit stop, come out in clear air, and use their fresher tyres to ‘undercut’ the Ferraris.
As the pit stops drew nearer, Ferrari began to reduce the lap time target. However they did so very slowly: The 1’48.5 target Charles Leclerc was given on lap 15 was still over a second slower than Nico Hulkenberg had gone on lap four. Charles initially lapped slightly quicker than that target, then backed off. His average lap time between the instruction and his pit stop was 1’48.7. However the team was still biding its time. By this stage a gap had opened up behind Charles which Ferrari could have brought him into, as they confirmed on lap 16, but for now they left him out.
Ferrari made the call to bring Seb in on lap 19. They gave him the instruction at the last possible moment – turn 20, shortly before the pit entry – to guard against Hamilton ahead of him reacting by pitting. The German driver’s pit stop was surely motivated by the fact Max Verstappen behind him had dropped back slightly, and the expectation Red Bull would pit him into the gap which had opened up. However with Charles still managing the pace at the front, that meant the fresh-tyre pace Sebastian had on his out-lap allowed him to ‘undercut’ his team mate.
Charles wasn’t even sure he was supposed to pit when Ferrari brought him in on the next lap. His pit stop forced Hamilton to stay out, hoping in vain he might get lucky with a Safety Car. After the Monegasque rejoined and discovered Sebastian was in front of him, he asked the team whether they intended to leave the cars in that order. In Hungary Seb had jumped ahead of Charles via the ‘undercut’ in much the same way, but Ferrari told him to let his team mate by again. This did not happen in Singapore. Stuck behind his team mate, Charles pointed out that his tyres were suffering. At this point the team’s sporting director Laurent Mekies entered the radio discussion, telling Leclerc “it’s all good”. This created an degree of confusion on the pit wall – at one point Leclerc had two people taking to him at once.
During the Singapore Grand prix and at the end of the race, Charles made his feelings known about the team’s tactics, but in retrospect the Monegasque driver admitted that his reaction was not the right one: “That’s not gonna happen again. My reaction in the car was inappropriate, even though there is a lot of adrenaline involved. The team did everything right. With a different strategy we wouldn’t have finished P1 and P2!” – Charles Leclerc said when asked about the team radio in Singapore.
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