Ferrari strategy in Hungary: Ericsson and Grosjean express their astonishment on Twitter. Ericsson and Grosjean express their astonishment on Twitter.

The smile barely held back by Max Verstappen and George Russell in the cooldown room ahead of the podium ceremony, the amazement of many former drivers expressed on Twitter. The decision taken by Ferrari to mount hard tires on Charles Leclerc’s F1-75 #16 on the occasion of the Monegasque’s second pitstop left the fans, the media and many F1 insiders speechless. “Did they put the hard tires on?” Lewis Hamilton commented in the cooldown room in reference to Ferrari and Charles Leclerc, revealing a certain amazement. “Yes”, Verstappen and Russell immediately responded with a certain satisfaction.

The mistake made by the Maranello team was to want to respond at all costs to Max Verstappen’s second stop and keep the lead with Charles Leclerc by making the same number of stops as the Dutchman. However, this decision involved the choice of whether to use the hard or soft compound as Ferrari decided to start with the medium tires while the Red Bulls started the race with the soft ones.

Charles Leclerc could have extended the second stint with medium tires by accepting to lose the track position to Max Verstappen and then go on the attack in the final part of the Hungarian Grand Prix with soft tires as did Lewis Hamilton, but not Carlos Sainz, the latter element which suggests that Charles Leclerc would not have had great chances to regain the lead in the last few laps.

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The fact remains that going from first to sixth position by making three stops to finish the race with the soft tires (and the fastest lap was taken by Lewis Hamilton anyway) represents yet another strategic error of the Ferrari pitwall. How is Ferrari constantly managing to mess up their races one way or another!? Crazy”, the tweet of Marcus Ericsson, former Caterham and Sauber driver. Romain Grosjean instead chose four smoldering head emojis to define Ferrari’s strategy. Lapo Elkann limited himself to an angry emoticon. Here are their tweets.