Ferrari maintain it is still too early in the season to implement what Red Bull did in the Spanish Grand Prix and impose team orders on their drivers.
With the World Championship potentially looking like a head-to-head battle between Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc, Red Bull ensured Sergio Perez played the team game in Barcelona.
After a Verstappen spin earlier in the race, Perez, who had kept it clean, found himself leading with the Dutchman behind him in second. Red Bull applied the ‘switcheroo’ and that meant the reigning World Champion won the race to also move ahead in the standings.
The man he displaced, Leclerc, had been well on course for victory himself until his Ferrari power unit failed approaching the halfway mark of the race and he had to retire.
But Ferrari do not believe the time has arrived to execute team orders like Red Bull did, with Leclerc now six points behind Verstappen, 19 ahead of third-placed Perez and, most relevantly of all in this context, still 39 clear of his team-mate Carlos Sainz – who finished fourth in Spain after an early spin that dropped him well down the order.
“No, I think it’s very early days for that,” said Ferrari’s sporting director Laurent Mekies at a press conference before qualifying in Barcelona.
“I think if you had a look at last year, points difference at the beginning of the season, you could have said the same thing. And in the end, things change.
“We are pushing a lot to make sure Carlos can adapt, Carlos can get more comfortable. He has shown extremely strong performance last year, we are convinced he will develop stronger performance in the very short term.
“So, it’s race six of 22 races, we are very, very far from having the good problem you are talking about. It is a topic for much later.”
Even though it appeared clear for all the world to see what Red Bull had done by switching Perez and Verstappen in Barcelona, team principal Christian Horner refused to label it as team…
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