Strategy Kills: How Ferrari lost out on precious points due to flawed tactics and reliability woes
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Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz battling in their Ferrari
Currently standing in the second position in the Championship table, Ferrari has got 303 points with 4 Grand Prix victories and 11 podium finishes for their two talented racers–Charles Leclerc and Max Verstappen, as opposed to Red Bull‘s 359 points with 7 race wins and 14 podiums.
But at the start of this season, noone had ever predicted that Red Bull, with all their issues with engine reliability and car weight, could topple Ferrari, who came out with the near-perfect F1-75 that got the Italian team a dream P1-P2 finish in the very first race of 2022.
But as we are almost in the middle of the current F1 2022 season, it is quite evident that Ferrari’s lead which they had established early on, could not be maintained throughout the 11 races that have taken place till now because of some key strategy errors and reliability issues. Ferrari has already had 4 engine problems in total in this season, due to which their drivers have had to DNF their races. Their most recent DNF came in Austria where Carlos Sainz’s brilliant show in Spielberg got interrupted as his car started fuming and finally went up in flames towards the very end of the race.
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Ferrari’s tactical errors seem obvious, upon taking a look at their results till now
When a team is eyeing the Constructors’ Championship, it has to be flawless in every aspects. But between their performance in Australia and the one in Austria, Ferrari could not manage to maintain their purple patch. In Melbourne, even though Leclerc came first, Sainz had a DNF. And the same thing repeated in Austria. It goes to show that Ferrari keeps losing out on opportunities where they are absolutely guaranteed a 1-2 finish.
In Ferrari’s home race in Imola, the Tifosi were expecting the Scuderia to win big, but a tiny strategical mistake resulted in pole-sitter Charles Leclerc to drop down to the sixth place and Carlos Sainz could not even finish his run due to a DNF. In Miami, Leclerc got yet another pole position, but he failed to convert it to a race win as Max Verstappen took away the first-ever Miami Grand Prix victory, and Leclerc and Sainz came second and third, respectively.
In Spain, Leclerc was the first driver to retire from the race while Carlos managed to come fourth and bring home some Championship points for the team. Again, Monaco, Charles Leclerc failed to convert his pole position into a race victory.
In total, Charles Leclerc has got 6 pole positions in all of the 11 races that have happened till now, but he has only 3 race victories. This goes to show how Ferrari’s tactics have yielded poor outcomes for the team, and has set them back in their quest for this year’s Constructors’ Championship. But with Charles Leclerc’s win in Austria, the team regained some of their lost confidence and the Monegasque even claimed that their team is back in the game now. So, it remains to be seen how Ferrari fares in the races to come, and if the Scuderia is able to clinch the Championship title at the end of the season, afterall.
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Riddhi Mondal
(1821 Articles Published)