Another Red Bull victory, this time in its home race, as Max Verstappen now has a solid advantage in the Formula 1 world championship. Mercedes will certainly not give up, but the work to find those last tenths will be very long. The Austrian car now seems to fly on any kind of track. At Ferrari they conclude a positive day by taking the first steps in understanding the problems they had in France. Fifth place for Norris, the only McLaren driver to score points.
Despite the adverse situation, both Ferrari cars found themselves on a very competitive strategy. Carlos Sainz because of the bad qualifying session, while Charles Leclerc because of the contact at the start. This way they avoided using the Soft tyre early on. The Spanish Ferrari driver showed a good pace only when he got rid of the traffic of some drivers who were using the Soft. Being able to delay the pitstop, he could now take advantage of his pace in clean air, effectively implementing an overcut on the drivers who started with the soft. Could they have thought of starting with the Hard tire at Ferrari? It would have been a choice made a bit in the dark. The qualities of the compound were not known with certainty. The choice to use the Medium was the correct one. A right compromise between safety and performance on the track.
In this phase, Charles Leclerc reassembled until he got behind Ricciardo. Here the Monegasque found himself stuck, wasting a lot of precious time. The Italian strategists therefore decided to stop him and entrust him with a medium tire to return to the points zone, as staying out and trying to get to the finish line would have been a risky choice. This time the SF21 performed very well in terms of compound management and it must be said that we have not had any feedback on the use of the softest tyre, namely the Soft, which has a lower working window. It would have been appropriate to evaluate the behavior of the Italian car on this compound.
Carlos Sainz was comfortable with the compounds until he found himself behind Lewis Hamilton. The Mercedes driver had lapped the Spaniard. However at that moment, the race pace of number 55 was faster, so much so that he could unlap himself. After being several laps in the exhausts of the W12, the Mercedes box decides to let him pass. A gentleman agreement between the two teams, aware of the current situation. An event that makes you think: in the German wall they were now aware that they could not catch Max’s RB16B.
Looking at the table below, the situation improved on average in the second stint. The race pace of the two Ferrari drivers stands out, excellent throughout the entire race. Carlos Sainz kept a pace equal to that of Perez and lower than that of Bottas.
Leave a Reply