2 Leclerc salvages fourth for chaotic Ferrari
Charles Leclerc vastly outperformed his machinery again to claim fourth place from eighth on the grid. That he described the result as “like a victory” perfectly encapsulates Ferrari’s status.
Once again the two Ferrari drivers approached the weekend with different downforce levels and took different strategies into the race, too. Leclerc had a precautionary power unit change after Sebastian Vettel’s failed during practice on Friday, costing the four-time champion important track time. Vettel continued to struggle with the SF1000, as he has at every race this season, failing to make it into Q3 and then spinning to the tail of the field on lap one, negating any strategic benefit he might have had from starting on hard-compound tyres.
Ferrari said it would respond to its drivers’ lacklustre grid slots by taking strategic risks and it duly did so, with mixed results. While Leclerc, who copes better with the SF1000 in lower-downforce trim, managed to execute an improbable one-stop strategy, Vettel openly took issue with a multi-stop plan in which he completed just 11 laps on new hard-compound tyres mid-race before stopping for used mediums 19 laps from the flag.
Vettel berated the team in the race and continued after finishing 12th, saying, “We spoke this morning that there’s no point pitting, knowing we will run into traffic – and that’s exactly what we did. It didn’t make sense. Why would you put on the hard for 10 laps and then the medium for 20 laps? I was running out of tyres towards the end. I guess not the best work we could have done today.”