How Leclerc blew another wet weather tyre call while Sainz nailed it

34 comments on “How Leclerc blew another wet weather tyre call while Sainz nailed it”

1. 

   MacLeod (@macleod)
   9th July 2024, 14:10

   I think Ferrari is thinking they contracted the wrong rookie … Charles is nowwhere when things aren’t standard situation.
   1. 

      Retired (@jeff1s)
      9th July 2024, 14:28

      He fears rain, just like his engineers, past and present.
      Even a blind man wouldn’t fit wet boots on a dry surface, but Ferrari has 1000+ employees to judge it.
      1. 

         JackL
         9th July 2024, 16:51

         It always makes me wonder. If rain is the great equalizer that allows the greats to really shine, and Leclerc has never shone in it, can he really be considered amongst the Verstappens and Hamiltons?

         I think of this new crop (Russell, Leclerc, Norris and Verstappen) only Verstappen has really shown himself to be special in the rain.
         1. 

            melanos
            9th July 2024, 23:05

            Alain Prost in an all-time great but he was nowhere in the wet.
         2. 

            Esploratore (@esploratore1)
            10th July 2024, 2:12

            Norris is really good in the wet, in russia 2021 he kept hamilton behind on light rain when both had slicks, then he was left out on slicks for a lap on heavy rain and didn’t crash, he did the best he could in the circumstances, and whenever he’s given the right tyre he looks one of the best of the current field on the wet.
         3. 

            David BR (@david-br)
            10th July 2024, 23:19

            Agree with @esploratore1 that Norris is pretty good. Hamilton and Verstappen are so good because they’re both smooth drivers who balance the car well and have an extremely fine sense of adherence. Sainz is curiously excellent in another way, excellent track sensitivity and reactions. He nearly always drives better than Leclerc in the rain or when track conditions are tricky. Leclerc just seems to lack the same level of ‘feel’ of the track and tyre adherence of the others. Also maybe why he sometimes inexplicably just loses it and spins out of the race. Russell, I’m not sure. Kind of there in the rain without being brilliant.
   2. 

      rprp
      10th July 2024, 12:50

      Charles seems to have a win or bust mentality, or doesn’t see the bigger picture. I think his call to box was at least partly driven by losing 1s a lap to Sainz in the damp conditions. Verstappen was losing similar amounts of time to the front runners, and had trouble with his first set of tyres, but was smart enough not to panic and switch to wets.
2. 

   Leroy (@g-funk)
   9th July 2024, 14:43

   The sad thing is that Ferrari will probably not learn from this and we will continue to see the same type of problems resulting from the communication between the pit wall and the driver. I think Charles puts too much faith in the pit wall telling him what he needs to know, whereas Carlos has clearly learned that he needs to get more raw information from them in order to make better decisions.
3. 

   Edvaldo
   9th July 2024, 15:04

   I’ve seen Ferrari do this many times. The driver is on inters and they say “it will rain in 5 minutes”.

   In 5 minute the inters will be destroyed already!! What’s the point?
   1. 

      grat
      9th July 2024, 15:18

      If the inters lose 15 seconds total lap time in those 5 minutes, fine. Not pitting, you probably save 5-10 seconds. But when the inters lose you 35 seconds, and now you’re 15 seconds farther down the track than you would be for pitting, you have chosen poorly.

      Ferrari keeps choosing poorly.
      1. 

         Edvaldo
         9th July 2024, 15:44

         But they will be unusable when the rain hits anyway. Ferrari did the exact same thing with Raikkonen in Malaysia ’09.

         And they told him the exact same thing too.

         “It’s not even raining”
         “Wait a little bit. It’s coming”.

         It came indeed. Way too late for those tyres.
4. 

   Dex
   9th July 2024, 15:37

   It’s a lasting pattern. I don’t say that Sainz is necessarily the smarter driver of the two (probably is), it’s more about Leclerc not even trying to think for himself in some situations when he probably should’ve. Perhaps there’s more potential there, but he’s out of practise and probably lacking some confidence with making his own decisions too, so even when he dares to make a call he’s not really able to focus and think fast.
   Brain needs practise too, not only when it comes to reflexes and memorizing tracks, procedures etc. Leclerc should probably work on his decision making process, as well as his capability to multitask. He’s had Sainz around for a while, it’s a bit silly that he didn’t try to emulate him a bit and steal some of his tricks. If he could that he’d become a complete package like Verstappen or Alonso, or at least Hamilton (who also prefers relying on his team and can make wrong decisions, but he can obviously judge the conditions on track with much more confidence).
   In the end, not every driver reaches his full potential. It’s not written that Leclerc will ever become a champion, let alone a champion above Button or Rosberg category.
5. 

   t1redmonkey (@t1redmonkey)
   9th July 2024, 15:51

   Sainz is really good at strategically thinking while he’s in the car and asking the right questions of his engineer, consistently shown this over his career. I said it before but he’s kind of in the wrong era, he’d have been extremely successful in the pre-radio F1 era where drivers had to make more decisions themselves without being spoon fed everything. There’s less chances to show this in modern day F1, but you can still see it paying off for him from time to time.
6. 

   Sham (@sham)
   9th July 2024, 15:56

   The golden rule, whether you need to make one pit stop or ten.
   Be on the right tyres at the right time. With more than half the track OK for slicks, slicks it should be.

   Ferrari had the information, but communication to Charles’ car was too poor.
7. 

   ruliemaulana (@ruliemaulana)
   9th July 2024, 16:26

   He described the rain using the same colour codes seen on the weather radar.

   Simple but smart.
   1. 

      Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
      9th July 2024, 16:34

      @ruliemaulana I agree though maybe potential for confusion with the flag colours.
   2. 

      SteveR (@stever)
      9th July 2024, 19:27

      Doesn’t seem so to me. With a number system, 1 for light, etc. it’s way easier to comprehend the differences in intensity. The color words just seem confusing and subject to mis-interpretation, especially over a car radio. Intensity 2 becoming intensity 3 just makes more sense than cyan becoming green.
      1. 

         DaveW (@dmw)
         9th July 2024, 20:25

         True but note that Sainz said he and his engineer studied the weather radar presentation. So they would have the same image in mind using the colors of how clouds were moving and changing. Sainz was able to visualize exactly what Adami was seeing in his screen. They really studied well for this.
      2. 

         Mooa42
         10th July 2024, 1:43

         @stever

         With a number system, 1 for light, etc. it’s way easier to comprehend the differences in intensity

         If that was the only number system in use, then your approach makes sense, but it could add confusion in this situation, i.e. intensity 1 in corner 3 and intensity 3 in corner 1 with diff map button at 2 etc etc they already have too many numbering systems to remember.

         I think they chose wisely and I suspect using cyan instead of blue was to differentiate between blue flags, and mentioning green/yellow together also to remove chance for misinterpretation, (although gold instead of yellow might have been a better option)

         Regardless of system, a good understanding between driver and engineer is needed and needs to be refined, so Charles and Bozzi have some homework to do.
8. 

   MichaelN
   9th July 2024, 16:28

   I do feel for Leclerc. He has had to deal with a whole bunch of issues that make his head-to-head with Sainz look worse than it probably should. But. This is not the first year this happens, and it’s not even the second.

   At some point, if a driver cannot get the team to rally around him, to go that extra step to support him, to be on their toes at all times to do their best job then it’s not going to be good enough to beat the likes of Hamilton, of Verstappen.

   As the famous quip from The Wire goes, Leclerc is having way too many ‘forth degree days’.
   1. 

      MichaelN
      9th July 2024, 16:33

      Forty degree days, that is. Thanks auto-correct.

      But on that note, this is Leclerc’s sixth year at Ferrari. That’s a long time. That’s longer than Alonso was at Renault, longer than Räikkönen was at McLaren. It’s how long Vettel was at Red Bull and Hamilton was at McLaren.

      I wonder if at some point a change of scenery will do him good.
      1. 

         Esploratore (@esploratore1)
         10th July 2024, 2:16

         Mmm, as you’re doing comparisons, he’s gonna reach the amount of years vettel was at ferrari when this season ends, as I recall he was there since 2015 and stayed till the end of 2020, so 6 full years.
9. 

   Asd
   9th July 2024, 16:34

   I’m under the impression that in recent years whenever it’s a wets/inters toss up, the inters always win, and when it’s a slicks/inters toss up, the slicks always win. So basically the drier tyres always win.
10. 

    RBAlonso (@rbalonso)
    9th July 2024, 18:41

    I’ve a few thoughts on this. Firstly, I’m going to afford the new race engineer some slack given the conditions did seem more marginal than the times suggest.

    Secondly, making one bad choice is acceptable, continuing on for another 5 laps praying for weather that you know isn’t coming isn’t. Even a move to the soft for half a dozen laps would have been a better option.

    Finally, and most importantly, why do Ferrari have contradictory information to each driver on the same lap? Leclerc chooses to box being told it’s 10 mins of bad weather when he’s at the wettest part of the track. Sainz is told it’s 2 laps. Leclerc’s then told it’s about to get heavier in 5 minutes and Sainz is told the intensity is reducing. Both engineers are looking at the same data and giving totally different verbal updates.

    Fundamentally, they jumped the gun when Charles tyres were going off but it’s indicative of the same problems we saw under Binotto – the data isn’t being read clearly. That panic cost Norris the race against Bono and Lewis and also shows why Max and GP are so successful. Driver and engineer must be in tandem and on Sunday it was another pit wall horror show from Ferrari.
    1. 

       MichaelN
       9th July 2024, 19:02

       I hadn’t heard that about Sainz and Leclerc basically having two different ideas of how the rain would unfold. That’s indeed pretty bad. You’d think they would at least sort of sync intel on the pitwall before they make such important decisions.
    2. 

       Mooa42
       10th July 2024, 1:56

       @RBAlonso

       Driver and engineer must be in tandem and on Sunday it was another pit wall horror show from Ferrari.

       They must trust each other implicitly too, like a rally driver and their co-driver. Norris has this issue too, the engineer needs to be strong and confident in what they are telling their driver, they must come from a position of having full faith in the information they are giving to the driver, if the driver doesn’t trust the engineer then it is unlikely to ever be a successful partnership. All well and good when everything is going smoothly but when the pressure is on, that’s when it really matters. GL and Max, both push each other and both push back too, Carlos and Adami have it too, I suspect coming from a rally background Carlos would have a lot better understanding than most about how important these relationships and how much trust is involved.
11. 

    Richard
    9th July 2024, 18:45

    When everything is going great for both cars I’d put my money on Charles over Sainz but we’ve seen for years dating back before Ferrari that Sainz is just a more strategic minded driver out on the track and many times he’s thinking about what’s best for both cars not only himself. I understand keeping Charles, he is three years younger but Hamilton is 10 years older than Sainz and I just believe it was a mistake to swap Sainz out of that seat in favor of Hamilton. I don’t think it’s going to matter that much though as Bearman is likely taking that seat in ’26/’27 anyway.
    1. 

       Esploratore (@esploratore1)
       10th July 2024, 2:20

       Wow, if bearman takes the seat in 2026 it’s basically an admission going for hamilton was a bad idea, they wouldn’t keep him only a year if he were successful.
12. 

    DaveW (@dmw)
    9th July 2024, 20:20

    Great report and a lot of work went into this. Racefans just put Bozzi on a Performance Improvement Plan. The only thing he forgot to say was “we are checking.”
13. 

    Alianora La Canta (@alianora-la-canta)
    9th July 2024, 21:43

    So, being given the wrong information (despite the right information presumably being available in the same garage) constitutes blowing a tyre call? Charles had an extra set of soft tyres due to missing Q2, and this would have been the perfect moment to use it – if he’d been allowed to do so.
    1. 

       Esploratore (@esploratore1)
       10th July 2024, 2:23

       No, indeed, I didn’t know he was given the incorrect information, but without knowing the situation I immediately guessed the team was to blame, it’s so ferrari-like to let drivers out on wrong tyres.

       Agree the softs would’ve been a good idea in such situation, however he would’ve had to recover the pit stop time in few laps, before pitting again for inters, so I’m not sure if it’d have worked better than just waiting it out on the tyres he had on, but certainly way better than what they did.
14. 

    Esteban
    10th July 2024, 3:45

    We are checking…
15. 

    Matthias[Wlkp] (@matthias-wlkp)
    10th July 2024, 14:31

    This is the kind of articles I’m here for. Great!
16. 

    Matt Dickens (@tsmv)
    11th July 2024, 18:44

    Why is Ferrari telling Leclerc 10 minutes of this intensity rain and at the same time telling Sainz one to two laps (3 minutes or less)????

    I doubt it has much to do with relaying the “colors” of the rain and more to do with the fact that they told Leclerc the heaviest rain would last 6 laps (10 minutes) and it lasted… one.

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