Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz have both been spotted developing frosty relationships following a series of wheel-to-wheel battles against each other. Now, Harry Benjamin from BBC speculates that the reason behind this “slight distrust” is because of the distrust in Ferrari’s strategies, enabling them to go for autonomy and ending up with lowly results.
The strategy department was a prolific section where the Prancing Horse failed drastically last year, and it seems the team hasn’t learned anything from it. Even in 2023, the Italian team committed multiple strategic blunders that resulted in a huge loss of points.
For instance, Sainz wanted to cover off Ocon in Monaco for the podium, but the team had their focus on Lewis Hamilton, who was further behind. In Barcelona, Leclerc wanted to go for the softs, but instead, he was given hards to go with. And most importantly, the team did not seem to have learned anything from the 2022 Monaco GP as they called for double stacking yet again in Austria this year. The result was the same, but this time the Spanish driver lost time.
These are added to Sainz’s recent admission at Silverstone, where he stated that he does not remember Plan B of Ferrari’s strategy, signaling the entire team to look confused. In the end, after having P4 and P5 start, the Ferrari duo ended up in P9, and P10, which further ruined their camaraderie from a cute one.
Ferrari is to be blamed for the Leclerc-Sainz rift
While Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton fought for the championship in Mercedes, Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen fought for dominance in Red Bull. Still, things aren’t quite the same for Leclerc and Sainz at Ferrari. Keeping aside the championship targets, the fight between them looks a bit out of place and not for the team’s overall development. But Ferrari has to take the blame for it.
“I think there’s a bit of this frosty relationship developing between the players,” said Benjamin in the recent Chequered Flag podcast by BBC. Following this, he emphasized how Sainz wanted to move past Leclerc because he believed he was the faster and “better” driver.
Not an easy day in Silverstone 🇬🇧 #BritishGP #F1 pic.twitter.com/3cCI9dN7Ix
— Scuderia Ferrari (@ScuderiaFerrari) July 9, 2023
On this, he added, “I think both are now developing a bit of a, maybe a slight distrust towards the Ferrari strategy team because they can get it right and they have done [so.]”
Benjamin also added that the Spanish driver has a habit of overruling the team’s strategy, unlike Leclerc. But in the end, the F1 personality pointed out that Ferrari has to take most of the blame for the worsening relationship.
Is this the start of Ferraris’ downfall?
At Silverstone, the Maranello-based team was the fifth fastest team [behind Red Bull, McLaren, Mercedes, and Aston Martin] when it came to pure pace. And for a team of this stature and two world-class drivers, this isn’t good enough.
Despite starting the year on a decent note, it is shocking how rarely they have competed for the podiums this year and are relatively far away from P2 and P3 in Constructors’ championship.
But the most important and shambolic part was how Alex Albon managed to dunk both of them to finish in P8 in a Williams challenger. All in all, things don’t look good for the team back at Maranello. However, it’ll be interesting to see how they fare in the upcoming races post-summer break.
