Can trigger-happy Ferrari harness all the talent at its disposal? – MPH

Mark Hughes

With change at the top once more for Ferrari, can it avoid wasting all the ability which runs throughout the team?

Ferrari F1 team photo 2022 Abu Dhabi GP

Ferrari is conforming to its football club-type with yet another change of principal

Ferrari

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Ferrari in its wisdom has made its ‘choice’ and “accepted” Mattia Binotto’s resignation. It’s done and there is no sign that the football club mentality of the upper management is about to change anytime soon. There is no-one of the necessary calibre willing to take the team principal job to succeed long term within that environment. But it’s quite possible that short term, at least, the team’s prospects are reasonably good.

It is onto a good technical path with both its aerodynamics and power unit, the regulations are relatively unchanged and there are good, creative people in the key technical roles.

The power unit was essentially turned down after the early-season races of this season as a complete and robust solution to the MGU-H reliability shortfall was sought. It wasn’t a short-term fix and the PU remained essentially detuned for the rest of the season post-Baku. The aggressive spec of the PU was a big step at the final opportunity of doing so: power was prioritised with the reasoning that any necessary reliability changes would be permitted within the regulations but performance changes would not be. So go all-out for the performance, then fix the reliability.

Ferrari F1 team Carlos Sainz 2022 Abu Dhabi GP

Carlos Sainz found himself having to intervene on strategy several times this season

Ferrari

If we can assume MGU-H reliability upgrades during the off-season are successful, we might expect a bigger jump of engine performance from Ferrari than any of the other three PU manufacturers. The bluff sidepod/outwash aero concept worked very well for the team and gave a car with probably more medium-high speed downforce than any other. All that and a few development tweaks should see the team ready to perform early-season despite the volatility at the top.

But the old underlying problems are likely to remain and one of these is clearly the race day operations of the team, with its sometimes questionable pitwall calls. Charles Leclerc was finding it steadily more difficult to hide his frustration about this as the season wore on. His question over the radio as Q3 began in Brazil being a case in point: “So, am I the only one on intermediates?” he asked as he was confronted by a track essentially dry on the line. Yes, he was told. “Beautiful…”

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In the adjacent garage the team had been intending to also fit Carlos Sainz with inters. “No!” he insisted strongly, before instructing them to fit him with soft-compound slicks and to get him down to the end of the pitlane as soon as possible, if not sooner.

This was the third time in the season that we know about that Sainz had intervened in correcting choices the team was about to make – and each time he was proven right. In Monaco there was his insistence that he go straight through from wets to slicks, missing out the intermediate phase. That prevented him from being passed by both Red Bulls rather than just one. Then there was the Silverstone restart when he had to calmly explain why wasting his new tyres trying to hold the pack off the old-tyred Leclerc’s back wasn’t going to work and that the only way the team was going to win this race was to let Sainz push on and have Leclerc in the defensive position.

It wasn’t Sainz’s fault that the team had left Leclerc out there defenceless, nor was he the reason they had made the wrong calls on Leclerc’s Monaco strategy. But doing what was best for the team – trying to rescue it from its own folly – once those mistakes had been made would of course involve Sainz jumping ahead of Leclerc. It wasn’t some calculated bid to trick a faster team-mate on the day, but simply pointing out the best way forward once the team found itself in the situation it did. It was Sainz refusing to be subject to the same errors of judgement from the team that Leclerc had accepted.

Ferrari F1 team Charles Leclerc 2022 Abu Dhabi GP

Leclerc is rumoured to be looking beyond Ferrari for his F1 future

Ferrari

Leclerc and Sainz rub along pretty well, work hard behind the scenes and are an incredibly strong pairing – the monumentally gifted but tough Leclerc and the very quick and smart Sainz. But it’s going to be interesting to see how the whole team-drivers dynamic develops as the Scuderia enters next season with a new team principal. Binotto was very much behind the promoting of Leclerc to team number one and the recruitment of Sainz to replace Sebastian Vettel. There’s been no material difference in what’s been at their disposal but the focus is inevitably on the guy who is setting the glittering sequence of poles and who was recruited as their big hope for the future. But under a new boss, how might that dynamic change? Will Sainz need to get even more proactive in over-riding the team? Does Leclerc have to begin emulating that? What does that do to the relationship? Does Ferrari feel it has already lost Leclerc long term (there are rumours of a pre-agreement with Mercedes)? In which case, will he remain its focus? Can the harmony and effective partnership of this line-up be maintained?

This could all get very tricky, very quickly and it needs a calm, logical presence at the head to keep it from doing so and squandering all that talent residing within the cockpits and outside of them.

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