Sainz won but tentative Ferrari made it a bigger British GP victory for Verstappen

Sainz also learned from the first start and took a more aggressive approach at the restart, maintaining the lead. Leclerc had another poor start and was behind Perez. The Monégasque made a daring move into T4 that resulted in a tangle causing both himself and Sergio Perez some front wing damage. Perez would go on to pit for repairs while Leclerc would carry on – as shown above.

Leclerc’s damage and subsequent loss of pace would be a second lifeline for Sainz, who was initially unchallenged by his team-mate in his campaign for a maiden victory.

As the tempo of the race settled, Sainz went wide through Becketts and had to take to the dirty run-off when rejoining the track, yielding the lead to Verstappen.

But another lifeline was about to appear as, two laps later, Verstappen slowed due to floor damage that forced him to pit early and took him out of contention for the fight at the front.

With both Red Bulls down the order and Ferrari first and second, Ferrari looked poised to complete a massive points haul for both the drivers’ and constructors’ championships.

Chart 3: Trend race pace, Leclerc vs Sainz vs Hamilton

Scroll up to chart 1 and see how Leclerc is held up by Sainz: the solid red line representing the Spaniard is shadowed closely by the red dashes of Leclerc.

Chart 3, above, illustrates the difference in pace, with the trend offering a better illustration of how fast each driver was able to go.

Leclerc starts the race strongly, despite suffering damage on the first “proper” racing lap. It only takes three laps to get back to the same pace as Sainz, who is in clean air at the front of the pack. Not long after this and Leclerc’s trend pace is starting to look more competitive than Sainz’s.

Leclerc’s lap times became compromised due to the dirty air

Sainz’s off-track adventure was costly on lap 10 and it imposes a further tax on his pace for the next two laps. With Leclerc trailing closely behind, this affects him as well and continues even after Verstappen comes into the pits.

At this point, Ferrari should have been asking itself whether a driver swap would have been sensible — Leclerc certainly was over the radio. The graph suggests that the answer should have been yes, especially considering Mercedes’ increased threat, with Hamilton lurking in third.

But instead of allowing Leclerc to establish a greater lead, Ferrari opted to keep both drivers holding station and Leclerc’s lap times became compromised due to the dirty air, displaying a plateauing profile.

Sainz was being given target lap times by the team and started to step up the pace before pitting on lap 20. This released Leclerc but the laps behind Sainz looked to have taken their toll on his tyres, affecting his pace. The time lost here would have an impact on the key decision that Ferrari made later in the race.

Even so, Leclerc was in overcut range of Sainz and could have pitted soon after to gain the lead, but elected to extend the stint to establish a tyre offset and diversify the strategy.

Meanwhile Hamilton continued to hammer out competitive lap times in a consistent fashion.

Leclerc came into the pits on lap 25 and emerged just behind Sainz, as Chart 1 shows, re-establishing Ferrari’s conundrum of what to do about its driver order.

Chart 3, above, shows that Leclerc once again had better pace but Ferrari delayed the swap until lap 30, which finally released Leclerc. Hamilton looked increasingly dangerous, given his pace — and potential pace given that he was yet to stop for fresh rubber.

Chart 4: Hamilton’s pit window for an overcut

Chart 4 provides an altered view of Chart 1, with the added detail of a hypothetical pit window for Hamilton.

The green line shows where Hamilton would have emerged if he had made an additional pitstop on any lap, illustrating that, from laps 25 to 31, he was within the overcut window against both Ferrari drivers — but remained out.

Hamilton’s pace started to max out from lap 30, which coincided with the improved pace of both Ferraris but also when Leclerc found clean air. Sainz and Leclerc were eventually able to increase the gap to Hamilton who would continue to extend his stint until pitting on lap 33.

Helped by a slow Mercedes pitstop, Ferrari still had a buffer to Mercedes at this stage of the race but faced the threat of Hamilton on fresh tyres.

This was a fortuitous for Ferrari, given that Leclerc lost bucketloads of time through its tentative approach to team orders, and Mercedes’ decision to maximise the tyre offset for a final charge.

Safety car alters the course of the race

But no bailout was bigger for Ferrari than the safety car that came out on lap 39 thanks to Ocon grinding to a halt. It not only neutralised Hamilton’s threat – as shown from his increased trend pace in Chart 3, but it also nullified Sainz’s fuel saving concerns due to the slow laps around the long circuit.

This was, on the other hand, bad news for Leclerc who had his race lead eliminated. And the news for him only got worse.

Chart 5: Telemetry from start of safety car period, Leclerc and Sainz

Chart 6: Telemetry from start of safety car period, Leclerc slow lap vs fast lap

Charts 5 and 6 highlight a driver’s position on track relative to the pit lane entry between Turns 15 and 16, helping to estimate how much time was available to make the decision to pit.

The sudden reduction in speeds shown on Chart 5, illustrates that the safety car signal was live for Leclerc as he was going through Turn 15 while Sainz was on the Hangar Straight.

Chart 6 looks at the difference in Leclerc’s telemetry traces between lap 39 (the first lap of the safety car) and lap 38 (last full green flag lap). The first race in Chart 6 shows that Leclerc loses about 8 seconds between the apex of Turn 15 and just before Turn 16. This gives a reasonable estimation as to the amount of time that Ferrari had to make and communicate the decision to Leclerc.

It’s unlikely that Ferrari would have been starting from scratch. The team would normally have an idea of what to do in the event of the safety car at every stage of the race. Furthermore, there was some time between the safety car signal and Ocon’s power loss on the old start finish straight. This would have provided additional time to anticipate a safety car.

It wasn’t an OR problem: there was an AND solution as well. That is, Ferrari could have elected to do a double stack pitstop. Sainz would likely have lost time, given that he was only 3.5sec behind, but the advantage of fresher, softer rubber would have given them a strong chance of passing Hamilton if he had stayed out, even though his hard tyres were only four laps old.

Team boss Mattia Binotto said that Ferrari left Leclerc on his hard tyres to avoid him pitting and dropping to fourth if other drivers stayed out. It’s clear now that this wasn’t the optimal strategy and he was left as a sitting duck. Ultimately, the fact that he didn’t lose more positions, or was able to keep Perez and Hamilton at bay for as long as he did is a credit to his talent on those hard tyres.

If he had been able to gain more time on Sainz earlier in the race, then the decision might have been different. But then again, Leclerc may have already passed the pitlane entry when the safety car was deployed.

Assertive Sainz

For Sainz, the call was his biggest lifeline. He converted his advantage on the soft tyre to take position over Leclerc and built a gap to the rest of the field as a historic battle raged behind.

The Spaniard got the job done in the final laps but his greatest accomplishment was his assertiveness: he stuck to his guns, stayed true to his self-interests and reaped the rewards of the fortune that came his way (which could be a return to equilibrium given his prior bad luck).

In contrast, the Ferrari pitwall’s indecisiveness was apparent in radio messages. While it might have the tools to win, the British Grand Prix suggested that it still needs the conviction to use them; Red Bull and Mercedes have shown that they won’t hesitate to use team orders.

Ferrari can’t rely on lifelines to win the championship.

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