Ferrari’s confusingly bad strategy at the Hungarian Grand Prix shows it’s time for change at the Scuderia, but it’s not Mattia Binotto who should go…
In a moment that succinctly summed up Ferrari’s day at the Hungaroring, the TV footage from the post-race cooldown room showed Lewis Hamilton asking “they were on the hards?” to fellow podium celebrants Max Verstappen and George Russell, enquiring about Charles Leclerc.
Both drivers laughed and confirmed Leclerc had, indeed, been scrabbling around on the white-marked Pirellis as Verstappen passed him on track, spun, and then promptly overtook him again.
It wasn’t as though Ferrari didn’t have ample warning not to use the Hard compound. Haas’ Kevin Magnussen fitted it on Lap 6 following his black and orange flag, as did the two Alpines when they came in on Laps 21 and 23.
With the Alpines, in particular, having shown competitive pace on the softer compounds, it was particularly telling when their pace simply fell away on the hards, unable to generate sufficient tyre temperature in the cooler race conditions as a constant light drizzle fell on the track.
On Lap 26, with the two Ferraris still ahead of Verstappen as Leclerc tackled George Russell for the lead of the race, Mattia Binotto told Sky F1 that he “wasn’t worried” about the pace shown by Verstappen as “his pace is [only] as good as ours”.
Having remained unfazed through the first round of pit-stops, as Leclerc came in on Lap 21 for a fresh set of Mediums some three to five laps after his immediate rivals, Ferrari certainly appeared far more worried about Verstappen than Binotto claimed as they hauled Leclerc in on Lap 39.
Having run 21 laps on the Mediums at the start, Leclerc’s second stint was just 17 laps when he came in to cover off Verstappen’s attempted undercut – a move that might have worked out had Ferrari been able to put him on anything other than the Hard compound.
Having had a lead of seven seconds over Verstappen when he pitted, Leclerc was passed by the Dutch driver just two laps later – the Monegasque having to then endure the embarrassment of being overtaken again when Verstappen made an uncharacteristic error.
Why did Ferrari choose the Hards?
Having started on the Medium compound, and then running the yellow-marked tyres for the second stint, Ferrari had backed themselves into a corner. Given the requirement to run two different compounds during a race, their call to run the Mediums for the…
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