Ferrari has been like a pendulum this season, swinging either the way of Charles Leclerc or Carlos Sainz. What has been its deciding factor in choosing who it favors? Qualifying. Whichever one starts the race higher up the grid gets the upper hand on Sunday. Seems pretty straightforward, right? What may seem straightforward now doesn’t necessarily work out during an actual race. This question of the “favored driver” at Ferrari has caused quite a few internal tensions between Leclerc and Sainz. But by focusing on that during the Japanese GP, Ferrari made yet another classic Ferrari error.

At the Singapore GP, Ferrari and Sainz broke Red Bull’s winning streak, but they couldn’t have done it without Leclerc’s team play. While they might’ve wanted to continue that momentum in Japan, the Suzuka outing would’ve been rather disappointing. Former Ferrari General Manager Peter Windsor couldn’t help but point out what went wrong.

Charles Leclerc & Co. didn’t maximize its options at the Japanese GP

For most of the first half of the season, Leclerc was usually the driver ahead in qualifying. As a result, he’d be the one to get preference on Sunday, even if Sainz had been the faster driver. After the summer break, the roles reversed, and Leclerc was the one playing catch-up. But in Suzuka, the Monegasque finally broke Sainz’s streak of qualifying wins over him and set himself up for a P4 start. With Sainz in P6, they both drove good races to finish where they started. But what went wrong?

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In his post-race debrief, Peter Windsor said, “A disappointing day for Ferrari if you look at it from the perspective of having won the Singapore GP the way they did and not capitalizing on that. I predicted in FP3, when the track temperature was 44, and Ferrari, with both drivers, ran on the soft tire with fuel in the car, that Ferrari would be looking at starting the race on softs, at least on one of the cars.” The soft tire is the fastest, but with Suzuka’s high tire degradation rate this year, teams knew it wouldn’t be the ideal race tire. So, on race day, Ferrari started its drivers on medium tires. As per Windsor, that’s where the strategic blunder happened.

“Maybe they just thought, ‘Better be conservative. The soft tire isn’t going to last very long.’ I think they made a mistake there. That’s not because I thought they’d be on the soft tire. I think there was nothing to lose,” he added. Fernando Alonso, who started in P10 on softs, finished the race in P8. That’s what Windsor pointed out. Considering Alonso started in tenth and finished higher, he didn’t lose positions. The strategy worked for him, and given Ferrari’s good race pace, it could’ve worked for Sainz and Leclerc as well.

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Ultimately, they finished in P4 and P6. Although 20 points is a huge chunk, you can’t help but think if it could’ve been 22 points. While Windsor thought Ferrari made the wrong call, Ferrari’s boss had something else to say.

Ferrari focused on the positives from Suzuka

Ferrari started the season on the back foot. Since then, the Maranello outfit has made considerable inroads in catching Red Bull. While Red Bull is still miles away, one team they are catching up with is Mercedes. Like Ferrari, Mercedes didn’t start the season too well, but it’s now P2 in the championship. Considering only six races left and a difference of 20 points between Mercedes and Ferrari, the Scuderia’s team principal, Frederic Vasseur, was happy with the progress Ferrari has been making. Especially since its Japan outing helped close the gap to Mercedes. 

With Leclerc and Sainz in fourth and sixth, the Mercedes duo of Lewis Hamilton and George Russell finished fifth and seventh. After the race, Vasseur said, “We are getting closer to Mercedes, and it was difficult to do better today. We chose the correct strategy, and everything went quite well. The degradation was kept under control, and there were some positive points. The objective now is to recover Mercedes in the Constructors’ championship, and we have gained four points.”

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Do you think the race’s outcome would’ve been different had Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz started on soft tires?