Ferrari reveal attempts to ‘destabilise’ Max Verstappen in 2022 Austrian GP at Red Bull Ring. Ferrari explain attempts to 'destabilise' Max Verstappen.

Spanish Formula One engineer Inaki Rueda, currently the sporting and strategy director at Scuderia Ferrari, explained how the Maranello team attempted to outfox Red Bull and Max Verstappen in last weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix, and how their strategy paid off.

Charles Leclerc pushed hard from the start of the race in Spielberg and remained close to his title rival, which forced the Dutchman to also try to go as fast as possible in order to defend his P1. However, Ferrari was able to manage tyre wear better than their opponents and as a result Max Verstappen degraded his tyres more quickly in the process.

After the Monegasque driver passed the Red Bull RB18 car of Max Verstappen for the first time, the Ducthman was called in for an early pitstop as he attempted to undercut the F1-75 cars of Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz, but the pace shown by both drivers allowed the Maranello team to have the upper hand when it came to race strategy: the Italian side was able to extend the first stint of both its drivers, which proved to be a solid advantage in the race.

Ferrari head of strategy Inaki Rueda explained that was the goal for them from the start:

“Come Sunday for the main race, we knew that one of the biggest problems would be tyre management.” – Inaki Rueda said in a post-race debrief video published by Ferrari on its social media accounts – “We knew that the soft would be too soft for the race, that left us with a race with hards and mediums, and we believed it would be in between a two and three-stop race. Our main aim for Sunday was to destabilise Verstappen. We were second and third [on the grid], and our aim was to put pressure on Verstappen and persuade him to stop very early for a suboptimal two-stop race. Charles put [on] enough pressure to actually overtake Verstappen, and Carlos was coming to overtake him. This persuaded Verstappen to stop very early, as early as Lap 13. This was too early for an optimum two-stop race, so we had reached our first objective.” – the Ferrari sporting and strategy director explained.

However, this strategy meant that Charles Leclerc had to pass Max Verstappen three times on track, but the significant extra speed he had on the fresh hard tyres was crucial and allowed him to regain the lead each time. Unfortunately for the Maranello team, disaster struck for Carlos Sainz just as he was about to overtake Max Verstappen for second place. The power unit of his F1-75 car failed and immediately burst into flames, forcing the Spanish driver to stop on the side. The final part of the race was very intense for Ferrari, as Charles Leclerc was then faced with an issue of his own.

The Monegasque driver could not fully disengage a stuck throttle pedal throughout the closing stages of the Austrian Grand Prix, making things much more difficult for him under braking and downshifting, as he attempted to manage the four-second gap to the 2021 F1 world champion, with both drivers now on new medium tyres.

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Inaki Rueda praised Charles Leclerc for being able to drive in such difficult conditions while also taking the race win and is confident the Monegasque will carry that momentum for the next two races, which take place in France and Hungary, before the season halts for August: “With only 12 laps to go, we suffered a small throttle problem. Charles managed to nurse the car all the way to the last lap and this enabled him to bring an amazing win. Two more races to go before the summer break, we’re fully motivated to get the best possible result out of this.” – the Ferrari chief strategist concluded.

Thanks to his win in the Austrian Grand Prix, Charles Leclerc put moved up to second place in the Drivers’ Championship ahead of the French, 38 points behind his title rival at the halfway stage of the 2022 Formula 1 campaign.