Behind the two contenders (Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen), in Spain there was the usual Valttery Bottas, stuck for many laps behind a fantastic Charles Leclerc. Perfect race for the Maranello team. Of course the fact that SF21 finished the race almost a minute behind the winner shows the gap is still huge, we are aware that this is the situation for 2021 and it will remain so, because miracles in Formula 1 do not exist and overall the signs are positive, especially because the changes made this year seem to fill many gaps seen at Ferrari in recent years.
The tire management worked very well, Charles Leclerc kept a very high pace in the first stint but this was not the reason for which he suffered on soft tires. The mentality of the garage was to cover the race on McLaren and since the goal is to beat the Woking team not on the single race, but on the distance to get third place in the standings, the attitude is understandable.
Charles Leclerc keeps an excellent pace also in the second stint, and only towards lap 55 does a decline begin to be seen, probably with the Monegasque starting to save tires in view of the arrival of Perez behind him. The second stop of the Mexican instead allowed the red number 16 to make the second pit and take home a nice fourth place, with the Ferrari pitwall that proved to be responsive and reactive. The car therefore proved to be gentle on the tires, fast, aerodynamically balanced – all excellent qualities. Speed on the straight is still lacking, as was pointed ou by both Mattia Binotto and Carlos Sainz (stuck behind Ricciardo for half the race) but overall the SF21 works well and certainly fared much better than a disappointing McLaren, which at this point seems to suffer a bit of a lack of vertical load, even though overtaking is very difficult at the Circuit de Catalunya. On the other hand, the Alpine is disappointing precisely in terms of tire management. In the graph above, the two blue lines of Ocon (however author of an excellent start to the season given who has as a teammate) and Alonso are impressive, literally plummeting downwards, unable to produce good lap times for more than a few laps after the pit stops.
These are the verdicts of Montmelò then. Beyond Monaco, which is a totally unique track, for the rest of the World Championship RedBull is practically eqal in qualifying, but will have to look for something much more consistent in the race to keep up with Mercedes and Hamilton (who in the end has already won 3 out of 4 races). Ferrari can believe in third place, but the rival McLaren is far from easy to beat and it will take many perfect races for the Maranello team to achieve its goal.
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