BUDAPEST, Hungary — On Sunday evening two different explanations for Ferrari’s poor result in Hungary were coming from the team. Race driver Charles Leclerc blamed the strategy, while team boss Mattia Binotto blamed the performance of the car.
Although the two statements weren’t unrelated, the difference in messaging between driver and team boss was notable. Leclerc — who finished sixth by the chequered flag, cutting him 80 points adrift of title rival Max Verstappen in the standings — believed the race was winnable. Binotto did not.
“In terms of pace we were strong, and probably had the pace,” Leclerc said in a post-race interview. “But yeah, eventually we didn’t and there are reasons for it.”
“What we were lacking today was really speed and pace,” Binotto said in his own press conference a couple of hours later. “I don’t think we could have won today.”
In the immediate aftermath of race, it’s not unusual for a driver to have a different perspective to their team. From the cockpit it’s much harder to see the bigger picture of a race unfolding, but for those observing impartially, Leclerc’s version of events seemed closer to how events unfolded on track.
That’s not to say Binotto was wrong. The performance of the car was clearly not as good as expected and that, in turn, magnified the strategy mistakes. But what has become abundantly clear is that Ferrari’s on-track execution is not good enough to challenge a driver and team combination as exceptional as Red Bull and Verstappen, and that point was made again by the performance on Sunday.
How Ferrari turns that around is the biggest question of all. It has a car and driver package that has shown flashes of title-winning performance this year, yet all too often mistakes — both from the pit wall and the cockpit — have derailed its chances of victory.
On Sunday evening, with any hope of a successful title campaign hanging by a thread, Ferrari looked divided and defeated.
What went wrong for Leclerc?
For the first half of the race, Leclerc appeared to be in a commanding position. After starting the race from third on the grid on the medium compound tyre, he had shuffled himself ahead of teammate Carlos Sainz at the first round of pit stops and then used the superior performance of his Ferrari to take the lead from Mercedes’ George Russell on lap 31.
But throughout the early part of the…
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