2022 French Grand Prix - Le Castellet, July 22 - 24

[Big Tea]

Max must have been saving tires by not passing Leclerc, but then chose to throw a spanner in the works and went to pit instead. Got in Leclerc's head, got him to push too hard, inherited the victory. Master plan.

Also Le Clerc went off the road. Had Max been prepared to take it closer to the edge and risk a D.N.F possibly he could have equalled the time.
The new grown up max is a more complex item

[Sieper]

Max must have been saving tires by not passing Leclerc, but then chose to throw a spanner in the works and went to pit instead. Got in Leclerc's head, got him to push too hard, inherited the victory. Master plan.

Also Le Clerc went off the road. Had Max been prepared to take it closer to the edge and risk a D.N.F possibly he could have equalled the time.
The new grown up max is a more complex item

I think it is also a bit in the car characteristic how they went through that corner. Plus, indeed, that is where Ferrari took the time so they had to push for it.

[Hammerfist]

Max must have been saving tires by not passing Leclerc, but then chose to throw a spanner in the works and went to pit instead. Got in Leclerc's head, got him to push too hard,inherited the victory. Master plan.

I dont really buy that theory, whether its a joke or not. Ferrari didnt even pit leclerc the lap after max pitted so to me its clear they were going to let max undercut and go long in the first stint. With a large enough tire offset i think it would have been an easy overtake on max. So leclerc was not pushing to prevent the undercut, he was pushing to minimize his deficit to max. So that when he pitted he would have been close enough to launch an attack.
Max could have countered that strategy by 2 stopping though. So he still had a shot at the win. Its unclear who would have won without leclerc crashing imo.

[dialtone]

Max must have been saving tires by not passing Leclerc, but then chose to throw a spanner in the works and went to pit instead. Got in Leclerc's head, got him to push too hard,inherited the victory. Master plan.

I dont really buy that theory, whether its a joke or not. Ferrari didnt even pit leclerc the lap after max pitted so to me its clear they were going to let max undercut and go long in the first stint. With a large enough tire offset i think it would have been an easy overtake on max. So leclerc was not pushing to prevent the undercut, he was pushing to minimize his deficit to max. So that when he pitted he would have been close enough to launch an attack.
Max could have countered that strategy by 2 stopping though. So he still had a shot at the win. Its unclear who would have won without leclerc crashing imo.

I agree with you, with one addition. Leclerc was warming his tires up gently the first laps. Here's my data for that statement:



red line is lap 11, blue line is lap 16.

Lap 11: Not using 8th gear (in the straight to T10), slower in every front limited corner.
Lap 16: Using 8th, faster in every front limited corner: T1, T10, T11 all corners that punish the front tires become faster on lap 16.

This is further proof that Ferrari was going long with their strategy and their tire management was better even here. And Lap 16 isn't even the faster lap he did after 11, it's close to the average pace he had.

EDIT: Also to further confirm your point, they did the same in Austria, when Charles managed to pass on lap 13 he went on fast laps about 1s faster than lap 10 which was kinda slow, never tried to beat Max on lap time after that, but Max was only capable of going 0.6-0.8s/lap faster on brand new hards, and when Charles came back post pit he was 1.5s faster per lap. He was looking to run the same strategy here.

[Sieper]

Max must have been saving tires by not passing Leclerc, but then chose to throw a spanner in the works and went to pit instead. Got in Leclerc's head, got him to push too hard,inherited the victory. Master plan.

I dont really buy that theory, whether its a joke or not. Ferrari didnt even pit leclerc the lap after max pitted so to me its clear they were going to let max undercut and go long in the first stint. With a large enough tire offset i think it would have been an easy overtake on max. So leclerc was not pushing to prevent the undercut, he was pushing to minimize his deficit to max. So that when he pitted he would have been close enough to launch an attack.
Max could have countered that strategy by 2 stopping though. So he still had a shot at the win. Its unclear who would have won without leclerc crashing imo.

Finally. Someone who sees it for what it was. Or at least, I agree fully and we might both be wrong.

Redbull chose to keep 1 yellow to start on and 2 whites fresh for the races. That means the most rubber to spent on going fast. Ferrari opted for 2 yellow and 1 white. That is a bit less rubber to spent. For me it was clear Max was on a 2 stopper and would have continued to push to built a gap and then try his luck at another stop and push again. Ferrari would have likely done a one stopper, or at least end on comparatively fresh yellows and have a chance to overtake.

It could have worked. But an untimely VSC and it is a guaranteed Lec win. They had to though as Max couldn’t pass on track on the same strategy. At least, that is how I saw it. But yeah. I often think about the strategy up front and it almost never plays out like I think.

[organic]

Max must have been saving tires by not passing Leclerc, but then chose to throw a spanner in the works and went to pit instead. Got in Leclerc's head, got him to push too hard,inherited the victory. Master plan.

I dont really buy that theory, whether its a joke or not. Ferrari didnt even pit leclerc the lap after max pitted so to me its clear they were going to let max undercut and go long in the first stint. With a large enough tire offset i think it would have been an easy overtake on max. So leclerc was not pushing to prevent the undercut, he was pushing to minimize his deficit to max. So that when he pitted he would have been close enough to launch an attack.
Max could have countered that strategy by 2 stopping though. So he still had a shot at the win. Its unclear who would have won without leclerc crashing imo.

Finally. Someone who sees it for what it was. Or at least, I agree fully and we might both be wrong.

Redbull chose to keep 1 yellow to start on and 2 whites fresh for the races. That means the most rubber to spent on going fast. Ferrari opted for 2 yellow and 1 white. That is a bit less rubber to spent. For me it was clear Max was on a 2 stopper and would have continued to push to built a gap and then try his luck at another stop and push again. Ferrari would have likely done a one stopper, or at least end on comparatively fresh yellows and have a chance to overtake.

It could have worked. But an untimely VSC and it is a guaranteed Lec win. They had to though as Max couldn’t pass on track on the same strategy. At least, that is how I saw it. But yeah. I often think about the strategy up front and it almost never plays out like I think.

RB expected a 2-stop prior to the race given what happened last year and the temperatures, but themselves have said it became a 1-stopper for them when they saw the tyres were degrading a lot less than they expected so a 2-stop made no sense. Can see this is obvious considering everyone that stopped for hard under the SC (only 2 laps after Max) easily went to the end on the tyre. Maybe they would have gone to a 2-stop if they were eventually overtaken by Leclerc to get the FL point but fundamentally Charles would've had to overtake the RB on track for position with a tyre offset

Max and Horner have said (whether you want to believe them or not is up to you) the tyre dropoff they saw at the end of their stint was from overheating due to sitting in dirty air, rather than true degradation. Have a look at the condition of the front left of max at the end of the stint and compare it to charles'. That's why they felt they could do the longer stint. Second they also saw how hard it was to overtake at Paul Ricard even with the new cars so went for track position. Obviously the strategy didn't work for them at Austria but it's served them well in the past (COTA)

[Sieper]

That is how it played out. But that was with Charles out of the picture as well.

[deadhead]

I was just being facetious But the Ferrari design has been producing A LOT of downforce from the very beginning, flexi floor or not, its working very well.

Obviously Mercedes have some big issues and even they can't seem to understand what to do with their car. Maybe if it was running last year's suspension system it would be fighting for the championship?

Maybe, probably... Not much they could or should have done different. Big changes were made to rules, they were fighting for c'ships in 2021, their staff was leaving a lot and they've been working towards zero-pods for years - to go in a different direction would have been a lot bigger risk.

Its my feeling that if we would've continued with the old rule set, the W13 would've been extremely hard to beat...

Do you think is possible for them to get the concept to work well enough to at least get close to the competition to cause trouble? At this point I think its pretty obvious that they won't suddenly go 5 tenths up, but maybe they can get closer. Talking about 2022. Maybe that TD is the key..

[Vanja #66]

I was sarcastic with that post. Some people will make up anything, except admitting the clear reality - Ferrari and Leclerc are faster than Max and Red Bull (less reliable, but faster). So I helped out and offered another insane explanation.

[Sieper]

Could be, at least Max was able to follow close and had made the undercut. At that moment Charles was so fast he took himself out of the equation. End.

[mzso]

Does anyone know of photos or footage of Leclerc's car being recovered. There's an unusual lack of it on the internet.
There isn't even on-board footage that doesn't stop immediatly after the impact.

[jordanb]

I was just being facetious But the Ferrari design has been producing A LOT of downforce from the very beginning, flexi floor or not, its working very well.

Obviously Mercedes have some big issues and even they can't seem to understand what to do with their car. Maybe if it was running last year's suspension system it would be fighting for the championship?

Maybe, probably... Not much they could or should have done different. Big changes were made to rules, they were fighting for c'ships in 2021, their staff was leaving a lot and they've been working towards zero-pods for years - to go in a different direction would have been a lot bigger risk.

Its my feeling that if we would've continued with the old rule set, the W13 would've been extremely hard to beat...

Now imagine if they would have continued with the old rule set for 2014!