Expert analyst and Formula 1 paddock insider Mark Hughes reflects on Scuderia Ferrari’s disappointing outcome at the 2019 Russian Grand Prix and the plan which the Italian side decided to use for the start of the race in Sochi:
“At no stage of the weekend was the Mercedes a match for Ferrari. So the team offset its tyre strategy – just to do something different. There was no way it was going to win this race just by doing the same as its rivals. Starting on the slower medium tyre rather than the softs of Ferrari, Mercedes planned to stay out longer in the hope of catching a VSC or a safety car in the gap between the Ferrari pit stops and its own.
Remarkably, that’s what it got. Yet-more remarkably, it was provided by Ferrari itself, which instructed Sebastian Vettel to stop the car on its out-lap after the pit stop for an electrical insulation failure of the ERS system that made the car ‘live’. For safety reasons, it chose not to allow Vettel to bring the car to the pits. And in that moment lost Charles Leclerc the race.
It was a trying day for the man who’d set his fourth consecutive pole the day before, as Vettel appeared to have reneged on an agreement to swap positions after being allowed to take the lead at the start to prevent Hamilton getting Leclerc’s slipstream. Such pre-race agreements often fail to stand up to competitive strain – and this was one such occasion as Vettel let rip with his best stuff and found a way to delay the agreed swap for as long as possible.
Ferrari has the fastest car right now, but internal tensions are intensifying.
The arrangement at Ferrari was clear, but always open to ambiguity. The idea of an agreement for the start was logical. The run to Turn One is so long that, other things being equal, the car which slipstreams the pole-sitter will be one-and-a-half grid lengths ahead by the time they arrive at Turn Three. Mercedes ran a similar plan to protect their positions last year. But the Ferrari plan this time was slightly different, as Mattia Binotto explained afterwards. “We agreed that Charles would give the slipstream to Seb and then not defend the position [into Turn Three] so as to not allow Hamilton an opportunity. That was the deal. Then Seb would later give the position back.”
It was predicated on Vettel beating Hamilton off the grid from one place behind, but that was actually a fair assumption. He was on the cleaner side of the track, he was on the soft tyres with Hamilton on the mediums and the Ferrari has more power.
Vettel’s getaway was perfect and he was almost instantly past the Mercedes and tight into Leclerc’s slipstream just as planned. Leclerc played his part to perfection too, staying left and allowing Vettel cleanly into the lead into Turn Three. Where the Ferrari plan began to unravel was the method by which Vettel would give back the position to Leclerc. It created the tiny sliver of ambiguity needed for competitive will to assert itself. Leclerc was told his team-mate would let him by the next lap. But Seb’s restart lap had been 0.3sec faster than Leclerc’s and he was pulling away. They’d put some daylight between them and the harder-tyred Hamilton, but still, it seemed risky to co-ordinate a switch-around with the Mercedes not so far behind.
Vettel’s initial reaction over the radio on being instructed was revealing: “No, I would have got him anyway,” he said of his lightning-fast start, which was, in fairness, better than Leclerc’s. Probably realising that wasn’t going to wash as a reason to dishonour the agreement he’d made, Vettel then suggested they wait until they’d pulled out more of a gap on the pack before swapping. This was actually eminently sensible, conveniently so for Seb, who continued pushing on. Hard.
Ferrari informed Leclerc of the revised arrangement. “I did as agreed,” objected Leclerc. “You put me behind him. We’ll talk later.”
It was a tricky situation they’d got themselves into and the ghost of Monza Q3 was hanging around too, unsaid. After the couple of laps Seb had suggested they do before trying the switch, he was almost 1.7sec ahead, with Hamilton by now over 4sec behind Leclerc. The request was put to Seb again. “He’s too far behind,” replied Vettel. “How can I let him by when he’s not here?”
“I tried to stay as close as I possibly could for two or three laps,” explained Leclerc, “but then it was very difficult to follow, especially first and second sector. The tyres overheated and then I dropped back a little bit.”
Perhaps rattled by the situation, Leclerc had been having a few moments, the odd lock up – and Seb had been clean and fast. “He needs to catch up,” the leader suggested. Here was Vettel the hard-edged competitor fighting his corner against the onslaught of time. He wrote that beautiful poem about time to honour the passing of Charlie Whiting. Here he was fighting it tooth and nail. The younger guy with less time in his body had surfed time better than him in qualifying, and has been doing so increasingly often. But that doesn’t mean you surrender to it. The qualities that make someone a champion competitor just won’t allow it. Was there possibly a way Seb could stretch time and allow him not to break the agreement, but to somehow make it impossible to honour? Yes, there just might be.
Of more concern to Ferrari was Vettel’s gap over Leclerc. With a pit stop costing 24sec, Leclerc had rejoined 28sec behind Vettel but lapping faster courtesy of his fresh tyres. Here was the simple and obvious way to switch positions to align with the pre-race agreement: just leave Vettel out long enough for Leclerc to be less than 24sec behind. Ferrari insisted this wasn’t the motivation for leaving him out for an extra four laps after Leclerc stopped. “No,” said Mattia Binotto. “It was to protect us from the possibility of a safety car coming out with Hamilton leading.” That too was powerfully logical, just like Vettel’s earlier reasoning for not swapping yet. And it was just as conveniently logical for Ferrari, as Vettel’s argument had been for him.” – Mark Hughes wrote for motorsportmagazine.com
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