Ferrari really dropped all the balls this weekend. Sainz has been in the way of other drivers repeatedly, which falls on his engineer who should let him know when cars are coming. In rainy conditions the drivers can’t see jack nothing in their mirrors and it’s like Sainz was just left to his own devices by his engineer.
Honorable mention for Tsunoda doing his best mobile roadblock impression. Holy heck he was constantly in the way this weekend.
Then there is poor Leclerc. He asked for slicks, and his team overruled him and it caused him to be eliminated in Q2. How much longer can he stomach Ferrari incompetence before he starts putting feelers out for a drive elsewhere? As things are going at the Ferrari strategy desk it’s clear the prancing horse has bolted the barn and his chances of getting a championship is in the low zeros.
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Poor Charles, one week after seeing what Ferrari can do in Le mans it’s back to the classic clown show in the F1 pit…
I feel for him. He is one of the fastest drivers in the field, and where others’ (Ham, Russel, Norris, for instance) lack of results this year is mostly down to a bad car package, in Ferrari’s case it’s just strategy and team not listening to their drivers.
I mean the Ferrari is not a slow car, up to Monaco it’s been the second/third fastest car in the field, but the Ferrari clownshoes tripping over themselves has not allowed their drivers to get the most out of the car.
Yeah, Leclerc has the chance to be one of the biggest and saddest what ifs in current F1 history. He’s a bit prone to errors, I think he’s trying to hard sometimes, to make up for shit from the pits. But I can’t remember a driver and car combination so promising, yet so underperforming in current times.
I agree re the errors. Key difference is that he has zero buffer against the odd error, because when he gets it right Ferrari goes out of their way to screw it up.
And 100% on him trying too hard because he has to try salvage a result against the pitwall’s best attempts to snooker him.
And this reminds me strongly of Vettel’s stint at Ferrari. Just drained the energy out of him.
Before I read your reply, I had the sentence “Leclerc is clearly overdriving to compensate for Ferrari”.
You can see it’s eating him up. The Ferrari deeam is not how he imagined at all.
Seeing him during interviews on french tv is getting more and more heartbreaking. What we see is a broken man, frustrated by so many fuckups that he lost all hope. Fred needs to step up and find race engineers who can handle the pressure.
I feel like he isn’t overdriving anymore. There’s no hope for championship, therefore no need to compensate for the clownery or the car’s shortcomings. Last year’s first half, he could keep up with the RBs by staying constantly at the limit, which left no room for mistakes, while Max could casually sbinalla and retake the lead in 3 laps. This year… yeah.
yes, poor management from strategy/pit wall people. Again.
It’s beyond my understanding how a team like this can make basic errors. It should be a given that you cover the basics of car racing procedures as is communication with your drivers and being sure drivers and pitwall are reading the same page of the manual.
All said, I can not agree with how Charles over reacts as if he was fighting for WDC. Of course, several years in his contract with Ferrari and it might be that he sees no progress in the team.
They fired head strategist for this year but are making the same errors.
Where’s the guy who kept a running list of Ferrari mess-ups for the 2023 season? It’s got to be long by now.
Disappointed on behalf of both drivers.
It was such a shame when that guy was banned from Formuladank
Why was he banned?
One mod when he started it had commented that if he didn’t do it each week, he would get banned, but another mod thought it broke against the rules and didn’t see it as a meme, so they banned for some time, then he posted the conversation on his own profile, so then he caught a permban from Formuladank
We need to bring them here, we need the list back
Qualifying alone is four. One for Charles and three times Sainz impeding other drivers. If I remember Leclerc was also in the way at the final chicane at least once in Quali.
Ferrari really dropped all the balls this weekend.
There’s still plenty of time for them to step on their own dicks. The weekend isn’t over.
I would laugh but they are less likely to take a win than Vasseur accidentally mooning the cameras as he trips and falls from the pitwall.
At this point I feel like a Red Bull drive, where he replaces Perez, is the ideal move for someone as talented as Leclerc. The opening races of the 2022 season really showed that he can keep up with Max on nearly every level. I hope he gets the chance
Unfortunately, as long as Max is at red bull I doubt we will see someone as talented as Leclerc move there. They need a number 2 driver, not someone that can challenge Max.
I would love to see Lando move to red bull if Max goes for an early retirement but realistically they will probably just get tsunoda once checo’s contract expires.
Agreed, they need to find their Bottas 2.0. Perez was filling that role. However, even with such a dominant car, Checo is falling behind the last few races. Would not be surprised if a replacement was called up next year. For sure the year after if there’s is a contract issue.
We were debating this today. Who do you promote? Yuki perhaps?
I feel like the succession plan for Merc and Ferrari have more options than RBR for a Max pairing
I hope Albon gets another chance, he’s showing speed
Red Bull doesn’t promote drivers they’ve dropped in the past, you can be sure of that
Wonder if he’d want another chance, after kinda distancing himself from RBRs program. I think he’s driving super well and would do a lot better now than last time
It was very telling when Leclerc said he thinks he should be on soft and the response over the radio was that Verstappen was on the same tyre as him. That’s not the point!
I really think he want out the team but there’s no other options at the minute.
This is such a want and not based in reality:
Whenever HAM retires, Leclerc making the switch to Merc would just delight me. I’d be really curious how he and George stack up
It’s a shame the timing doesn’t line up better with Leclerc’s contract ending/Hamilton’s retirement (not currently anyway).
Lando still the most likely Mercedes pick for 2026 for me.
I agree on both accounts. Another interesting pairing would be George and Lando. Besides Max (in a bit of a field of his own?) It’s hard to tell how the “middle aged” F1 generation stacks up (Leclerc, Lando, George, Albon, specifically)
Weird to think of those four drivers as middle aged, but they have been around a while now.
I don’t get it. While Ferrari did make a mistake by not listening to Leclerc, he was on the same strategy as the red bulls and Sainz. Verstappen and Sainz pulled out the lap necessary to progress while Leclerc and perez did not. How exactly is Leclerc blameless in this
Maybe not blameless, but he asked for slicks early on, and given what the other teams who did slicks achieve his was the right call.
Well red bull also had a similar strategy to Ferrari and perez got knocked out in Q2 as well but nobody is saying RB got their strategy wrong which resulted in perez’s elimination. Yes it is true that leclerc recommended slicks whereas perez did not but it is still the teams responsibility to pick the right tyre. Ferrari are treated way worse for making similar mistakes
