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🇫🇷 F1'22 R12: Turn on, tune in, drop out

You know it’s good when someone other than the drivers get turned into a meme. Come on down, Ferrari’s strategy department! *Smash cut to House of Commons* or *Ipswich Town defending* 

It was a scorching hot day in France, and things were getting a bit testy in the heat, with some angry radio messages from the likes of Lance Stroll and George Russell, with the latter claiming he was not at fault for another incident he was involved in. But, both drivers scored points, so maybe screaming is the way forward for F1 drivers. 

*Smash cut to Charles Leclerc* 

Ah. Ok, maybe not. Ferrari - not for the first time this season - had their strategy called into question with a couple of bizarre decisions, with everything from fundamentals to timing to execution being met with the same look as a dog being shown a card trick. 

Let’s start with Charles Leclerc, who you heard from earlier. This is what caused the primal scream - a crash into the wall while leading. 

Towards the end of the Austrian Grand Prix, Leclerc complained that his throttle pedal was stuck a little bit, which made the closing stages difficult. The problem may have persisted, although the Monegasque driver later admitted that it was his mistake that saw him end his race early, losing control of his car as it careered into the wall and brought out a safety car. 

It’s a long pitlane in France, and it triggered a mass round of pitstops, which should have been - but ultimately was not - bad news for Max Verstappen, who made his tyre change a couple of laps before. With Leclerc out, Ferrari could focus on a hard-charging Carlos Sainz, with the Spanish driver starting from the back row after his car was flame-grilled in Styria. 

Sainz had steadily moved his way up the order, but even the stop hurt Ferrari, with an unsafe release resulting in a five-second penalty, and possible tragedy, were it not for a fast-thinking McLaren mechanic. 

So with the spectre of a penalty looming for Sainz, it became a many-pronged decision. Do we pit, if yes, then which tyres, and when and what position can we fight back from? If not, will his tyres fall off the cliff? After his first stop, on medium tyres with the cars around him on hards, Sainz came alive, skilfully slicing his way through slower cars with older tyres as he approached Sergio Perez’s Red Bull. Just the perfect time to hear a contradictory message on pitting from your team. 

He did brilliantly to recover after the second stop, taking the penalty and eventually finishing fifth, but there is a definite what-if here in looking at the scenario if Sainz had not pitted and taken the five seconds at the end of the race instead. Sainz was making his old mediums work and would probably have pulled away from Perez and Russell - maybe not enough to mitigate, but it might have been worth a try - and who knows what could have happened later, especially with Russell and Perez getting closer and closer to each other. 

  
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The British driver clashed with the Mexican for the second time in as many races, receiving a five-second penalty in Austria. In France, they gave Drive to Survive enough material for an entire episode as they made contact again.  

No penalty was given this time. Perez stayed ahead until Zhou Guanyu’s retirement brought out the virtual safety car. As it expired, Russell nipped past Perez for a third place that he never relinquished. Russell was certainly angry after the contact previously, remonstrating with his team that he was ahead, or from the new rules, he should have been allowed space and Perez should have been penalised. 

Toto Wolff gave Russell encouragement from the pitwall, telling him to keep his head down and that he could catch him on the track. 

Wolff showed the value of a great team principal. While you have strategists and computers and simulations and literally everything else that can be read by data, sometimes you just need to remove yourself from the whole race and run the strategy a few laps at a time, moulding it around your driver and the immediate situation. 

In this case, it meant calming your driver down and giving him the space to reset him mentally. Mercedes have come a long way from the start of the season when it looked like Q3 was a stretch. After the Miami race, Wolff apologised to Hamilton. This time, after his second place, he talked to him about the work they’ve been doing. Their first double podium since Saudi Arabia 2021 could be a real watershed moment for the team, who are now just 44 points behind Ferrari, all without a win this season. 

Compare Mercedes radio communications with Ferrari’s on Sunday: One driver has a primal scream that will haunt people, the other openly questioning a strategy that might have cost the team a place. Probably not the thing you put at the start of the season review.

There’s one more race before the summer break now, with Hungary being the ultimate test of the new regulations. The Hungaroring is notoriously difficult to overtake at, making pole position super important. Ferrari are a top team, they’ve almost always been a top team in the modern era, but it doesn’t matter how fast your car is if you can’t execute the strategy. They’re seeing the results of that now, with the Italian giants looking over their shoulder at Mercedes, rather than focusing on chasing down Red Bull. 

Hungary did also generate an excellent meme from last year, with Lewis Hamilton taking the start from the grid on his own. It’s another way of showing all the drivers who have scored a podium in their 300th race and beyond, as the seven-time world champion did.

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