Scuderia Ferrari and Racing Point are driving in new surroundings this year. Ferrari further back, Racing Point further forward. This also has implications for strategy. And that’s the reason why things don’t always go according to plan with the two teams.
Ferrari feels unjustly criticized. At the Spanish GP, the dialogue between Sebastian Vettel and his race engineer Ricardo Adami caused astonishment. One time Seb was supposed to step on the gas, then watch his tyres again to make sure they would hold until the chequered flag. It all happened in just five laps. In fact, Ferrari did everything right on the bottom line. But the way to get there seemed quite uncoordinated from the TV viewers’ point of view. Team boss Mattia Binotto explained: “We talk openly on the radio, you sometimes look unhappy. …but it was through communication that we arrived at the best strategy.”
There’s a reason for approaching the best strategy in front of an audience of millions. Ferrari is just learning that races are different in the chase pack than they are at the top. Same thing happens at Racing Point, only it’s the other way around. The English racing team traditionally drove in the back of the midfield. But now, with the two Ferrari and the second Red Bull, new opponents are joining the field, and it’s no longer just a question of places 5 to 10. Secretly, Racing Point is also aiming for the third podium place, should one of the top trio get into trouble. Team boss Otmar Szafnauer explains: “Where we drive now, different laws apply than where we drove before.
More opponents for Ferrari than before
Scuderia Ferrari chief strategist Iñaki Rueda makes a new experience weekend after weekend. Until last year, he had to keep an eye exclusively on the two Mercedes and Max Verstappen. Now he can forget about the three cars. For this, one Red Bull, two Racing Point, two McLaren, two Renault and two Alpha Tauri are in the game. “The strategy has become more complicated,” admits the Spaniard. “In the last few years our task was to find a gap big enough before the first stop. Then we were among ourselves with very similar calculation models and few parameters. Now we are fighting in a group of drivers and teams that are very close together. That forces us to adjust tactics often lap after lap.”
There’s a lot of dynamics in this field of 11 cars. Different numbers of pit stops, different tyre choices, different pit stop timing. While the Ferrari engineers played two chess games in parallel last year, there are now five. The opponents are used to this multi-tasking from the past. Ferrari has to learn it first. Rueda: “Traffic was hardly a factor in our strategy programs in the past. Now it is decisive.”
The best example is Barcelona. A second pit stop by Sebastian Vettel would have been fatal. He would have fallen to the end of a seven-car pile and would probably have remained without points. Hanging on till the bitter end was the only option. A strategy that was only born during the race and that Ferrari did not yet believe possible on lap 47, but did on lap 51. “That’s why we have more radio communication than before,” Rueda apologises.
Two Ferrari mistakes
So far, the Ferrari command post has only had to deal with two errors. Charles Leclerc got the soft tyre at the GP Hungary at the first pit stop. It was already clear on Friday that this rubber compound was no good as a racing tyre. Charles paid for it, because he had to make his second stop much too early and then had a much longer remaining distance in front of his chest. Seb refused this type of tyre. Ferrari listened to him. So in the end, a sixth place was possible.
In the second Silverstone race, Seb was brought into the pits too early. Before that, the German had been setting consistent lap times. No sign of critical wear and tear. “I could have gone another ten laps. Then I wouldn’t have fallen into traffic. We did exactly what we wanted to avoid,” the German complained afterwards.
Here he might have had to be a bit more specific himself to convince the engineers that it would have been better to wait. Vettel suspected that Ferrari wanted to avoid a stable direction. Leclerc was only 1.6 seconds behind him. Yet it would have been no problem for Seb to move aside. The team-mate was on a different strategy and not at all Vettel’s direct opponent.
Leave a Reply