The first thing to point out at the end of Scuderia Ferrari’s Hungarian Grand Prix is that Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz had, both during the race and after, two completely opposite feedbacks on their cars. Carlos Sainz complained extensively of bad balance and high tire degradation. Charles Leclerc, on the other hand, said during the race that he felt very good with the medium tire and confirmed this in interviews, stating that he did not have any problems with pace.
This is most likely due to two factors, as explained by Federico Albano for formulapassion.it: the first is that during qualifying, Charles Leclerc already had problems with low temperatures and said he had to study to eliminate the problem for the race, a task that he apparently succeeded very well. On the other hand, there is a more specific aspect of the nature of the two drivers. Charles is in fact more instinctive and able to adapt quickly to changing conditions, unlike Carlos who needs to work a lot to get the most out of it. The radical change in temperatures, with the race run with more than 15 degrees of difference compared to the free practice simulations, put the Spaniard more in difficulty than the Monegasque, similarly to how things were at the beginning of the year, when Charles found performance and Carlos struggled more. However, what remains certain is that Charles had a much better pace than his Maranello teammate, so much so that he managed quite easily to overtake him via an overcut at the end of the first stint.
The Monegasque driver was the fastest on the track in the first two stints and was even faster than Lewis Hamilton in the last soft tire stint (12 laps for Charles, 15 for Hamilton up to VSC). Based on some simulations, if instead of stopping for the second time, Charles had done from that lap onwards the race with Carlos Sainz’s times he would have easily finished in second place, while with a couple of tenths per lap more than his teammate he would have fought head to head with Max Verstappen for the victory.
We have seen that Charles Leclerc’s pace advantage over Carlos Sainz was 4 tenths in the central stint and well above half a second on soft tires, so Charles would have had what it takes to even fight for the race win. Probably the F1-75 with higher temperatures would have had a much more conspicuous advantage over the rivals but the data (and the words of the driver) leave no room for interpretation even for the Ferrari Team Principal.
The team has grown enormously in all other departments, while that of strategies is becoming a heavy burden to carry around, in which it would be necessary to show signs of improvement, as has been done elsewhere. There is a clear need for an experienced figure for the department, who can address a re-foundation both of the simulation on which the information systems are based, and the decision-making hierarchies. The drivers are able to fight for the world championship, the technical department has produced a world championship car, the engine has a reliability problem but in perspective it is certainly able to fight for the world championship. The huge strategic errors shown this year (but not only) are absolutely not worthy of a team that wants to fight for the titles. But the first step to solving a problem is to face reality and understand that you have it.
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