“We need to decide now”: Inside Sainz and Ferrari’s French GP strategy dilemma

10 comments on ““We need to decide now”: Inside Sainz and Ferrari’s French GP strategy dilemma”

1. 

   MG1982 (@mg1982)
   26th July 2022, 18:58

   the hesitation clearly cost them.

   No, it didn’t. The unsafe release costed them, more exactly 5sec. Pitting 4 laps earlier, as mentioned, wouldn’t have changed anything. He finished like 11,5sec behind PER, there’s no way he would have caught PER and passed him too with an extra 4 laps. It was a decision between continuing and see what happens once he was in P3 OR pit like 10 laps earlier than he actually pitted 2nd time and hope his tyres are still good enough to pass PER. My opinion is that, maybe there were afraid a little bit too that the tyres won’t last, but I think the decision behind the 2nd pit stop in like the ”last moment” was to get the FL from VER while being sure he can’t stop again too… but Ferrari couldn’t tell SAI this reason: that they possibly threw away his P3 just to stop VER from gaining 1 more point.
   1. 

      Delphi
      27th July 2022, 2:52

      The upside being that it’s a two point differential in Sainz’s putative title fight.
   2. 

      BasCB (@bascb)
      27th July 2022, 7:45

      That seems a fair assessment @mg1982
2. 

   roadrunner (@roadrunner)
   26th July 2022, 19:05

   The stop immediately after having passed Perez didn’t make no sense at all. They should either have committed to a two stopper at least half a dozen laps earlier or go to the end.
   In my opinion the latter was definitely worth the try. The soft tyres were still good enough to pass Perez and the claims that they would neither make it to the end nor allow him to pull away is highly speculative and probably only out of self defense.
   Perez was also fighting was Russel so both lost further time.
   They could have waited a couple of laps longer to see how things would play out.
   If he really wasn’t pulling away fast enough they could still pit, pass McLarens and Alpines in a flash and pick up fastest lap.
   So nothing to lose, really…
   Ferrari strategy simulation seems to have difficulties to adapt to scenarios out of the norm and decision making is taking to long.
   1. 

      sumedh
      26th July 2022, 19:44

      They could have waited a couple of laps longer to see how things would play out.
      If he really wasn’t pulling away fast enough they could still pit, pass McLarens and Alpines in a flash and pick up fastest lap.
      So nothing to lose, really…

      This actually makes sense. Wonder why I didn’t think of it!!

      Sainz passed Alonso with 5 laps to go, they definitely had buffer to see how easily the 5 second gap was building. True.

      Such a strange situation, at first they argued for long should whether they stop or not. The longer they argued the worse the decision looked. But as you rightly said, had they waited even longer, the decision would have seemed better.

      The only explanation for their stop is that Ferrari felt DNF due to tyre failure was a real risk, which IMO was not inconceivable especially in the Ferrari garage. As I said below, Ferrari could be thinking that degrading medium tyres may have played a part in Leclerc error and hence, they wouldn’t want Sainz to also face the same issue
      1. 

         roadrunner (@roadrunner)
         26th July 2022, 20:03

         Agreed. They were not in the mood to take any risks. Having a tyre blowing up must have been their worst nightmare especially after what happened to Leclerc.
         The pressure on the whole team must be immense.
3. 

   sumedh
   26th July 2022, 19:37

   Fantastic read!

   The more I think of it, it feels Ferrari decision was right. Sainz was no more than 0.5s quicker than George / Checo on any of these laps. His average pace was probably only 0.2-0.3s better. He couldn’t have negated the 5 second gap to either of them. Plus, it is not inconceivable that Ferrari were thinking that degrading medium tyres may have played a part in Leclerc error and hence, they wouldn’t want Sainz to also face the same issue.

   Taking 11 points with 100% guarantee is a better choice than having a toss-up between 1) very low probability of 12 points, 2) even lower probability of 15 points, 3) High probability of 10 points or 4) very low probability of 0 points

   What would have been fun is if they had continue to argue for another 3-4 laps and then pitted under VSC and then come charging back at George and Checo in the last 2 laps on a car almost 2-3 seconds per lap faster.
   1. 

      tvidovic
      27th July 2022, 9:12

      if we give 20/10/69/1 % chances for those 4 options you listed, expectation is 10.8 points. Sounds pretty close, so going with the decision that takes a point from Max as well seems correct.
4. 

   tielemst
   27th July 2022, 8:13

   Reading this I’m more and more baffled that Checo handled the ending of the VSC so badly and treated it as if the glitch cost him his position. It seems clealry something the drivers and pit walls are used to dealing with.
   1. 

      Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
      27th July 2022, 12:51

      It did sound like most of the other teams took that in their stride.

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