Ferrari took pole in six out of eight Formula 1 races. The race balance but crashes – in Canada, the focus is also on the team boss.
The fact that Ferrari has finally done perfect preparatory work again this year and actually has the most powerful car in the field can be seen from the qualifying hardly dispute. Not even Red Bull can keep up on Saturdays. But what the glorious racing team from Maranello makes of this advantage a day later in the races is so poor that Leclerc, who started the season so hopefully, now admits: “It really hurts.”
“Must not happen to us anymore”
Most recently, at the fiasco in Baku, both Reds were eliminated due to technical problems. The forthcoming race weekend in Canada (live ticker on sportschau.de from Friday, 8 p.m.) will have to show whether these are of a more serious nature.
Leclerc quarrels: “It really mustn’t happen to us anymore. We didn’t have any major problems at the beginning of the season and we didn’t change much either. That’s difficult to understand and very disappointing.”
Charles Leclerc is frustrated after being eliminated again in Azerbaijan
Car champion, tactics pathetic
So far, however, the problem has not been the technology. But rather the tactics. After the victories at the start in Bahrain and in the third race in Australia, Ferrari made the devastating mistakes of the previous season surprisingly quickly: communication breakdowns, coordination errors, wrong decisions during safety car phases and late, premature or unsuccessful pit stops. Tutti come semper, everything as always in Ferrari’s recent past, but this time it’s worse. Because the car is in 2022 world champion form.
“Maranello, we have a problem“, headlines Tuttosport after Baku and thus before Montreal, the Gazzetta dello Sport writes about one “heavy blow” for Leclerc’s World Cup hopes and La Stampa sounds the alarm: “For Leclerc, the world title is at stake.”
Even Pérez passes Leclerc
It’s not too late yet, there are still 14 races to go, 350 points in the pot. Leclerc is “only” 34 points behind Max Verstappen, but the trend is worrying: In the meantime, even Sergio Pérez has overtaken Monegassen in the second Red Bull.
Team boss Mattia Binotto, who was badly battered in the previous season, is already in high demand again, and his statements don’t necessarily sound as if he has concrete solutions with a view to Canada: “We will try to make amends for Baku. There is definitely still work to be done.”
“Definitely room for improvement”
As always during his tenure, Binotto tries to emphasize the positive, but that closes the discrepancy qualifying and don’t exactly run in a better light either: “Compared to last year, we’ve made big strides in terms of performance. But there’s definitely still room for improvement in terms of reliability.”
Ferrari in Canada has to fill this space with content, i.e. with results. Otherwise, the team boss himself will increasingly come into focus – in the search for a possible solution to the big Ferrari problem.