The first Safety Car period in the 2022 Formula 1 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix came at the right time for Scuderia Ferrari, as Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz were able to take advantage and overtake the Red Bull of Sergio Perez, who had pitted one lap earlier. However, in the final stage of the Jeddah event, the episodes unfortunately went against the Maranello team.
Even without considering the yellow flags caused by the crash between Williams’ Alex Albon and the Aston Martin of Lance Stroll, which nevertheless helped Max Verstappen to defend himself from Charles Leclerc, the Virtual Safety Car played a decisive role in the outcome of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, as explained by Valerio Barretta for formulapassion.it.
Before the Virtual Safety Car regime, Charles Leclerc Leclerc had managed to build a +1.621 margin over the 2021 Formula 1 world champion and was therefore outside the DRS margin. Then the drivers were forced to play with the deltas, that is the margin (positive or negative) on the minimum overall lap time in a given marshalling sector (in Jeddah there are 21). Each driver must stand above this reference at least once in each sector.
Both Charles Leclerc and Max Verstappen did it, but evidently the Monegasque was unable to manage the delta as best as possible, because the last reference is +0.65, as can be seen from the steering wheel. This means that the Scuderia Ferrari driver was 650 thousandths slower than he should, failing to stay close to zero. One explanation may be the timing when the Virtual Safety Car ended: Charles Leclerc was in fact in full straight and at high speeds it takes very little to make the delta negative (and therefore ‘overtake’ the Virtual Safety Car, which is obviously not allowed).
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The Max Verstappen delta, on the other hand, remained much closer to zero, this means that the Dutchman gained six tenths on Charles Leclerc due to the Virtual Safety Car (in fact the first reference given by the F1TV graphics is +1.047 against the initial 1,621 ). The situation was even worse for Carlos Sainz, whose last reference in the VSC period recorded a value of +2.46 on the reference time, much more than the ideal time. And in fact the Spaniard went from a gap of +4.927 behind Max Verstappen to a much bigger gap. These are the data collected by Federico Albano and presented by formulapassion.it on the management of the delta by the two Ferrari F1-75 cars:
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