The Hungarian GP is just the latest of blunders from the Scuderia this season, and someone needs to pay. Sometimes a revamp is what a group or team needs to reset itself, and that is the cold hard truth for Ferrari to think about during the summer break. That cold hard truth should be Mattia Binotto being relieved of his duties as team principal at Ferrari. It may be something hard for Ferrari to come to terms with, Binotto is a lifer within the Scuderia, but under his watch Ferrari have almost blown any chance at the driver’s world championship and the constructor’s doesn’t look much better.
The Hungarian strategy that Ferrari tried to pull was not even part of Pirelli’s 4 recommended strategies, and with the Alpine’s struggling mightily on the hards it was easy for every other team to see they were not a viable tyre that afternoon. Every team except Ferrari, who seemed to think the hards were doing well based on the Alpine’s run which was lackluster at best. Even against Pirelli’s recommendation and the clear poor run by Alpine, Ferrari nonetheless still Ferrari’d it an put Leclerc on hards for nearly the entirety of the race and only switched to softs where Leclerc could only recover to P6.
This was supposed to be the year for Ferrari finally. After years of being on the back foot, they nailed the regulation changes and showed it in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Australia as Leclerc took victory in 2 of those 3 races and very nearly won in Saudi Arabia. But blunder after blunder after reliability failure after reliability failure has sunk Ferrari into a closer fight to Mercedes who were way off to start the year than Red Bull. Since the first 3 races Ferrari has only won in Great Britain with Sainz and Leclerc in Austria. An over 100 point swing between Leclerc and Verstappen was possible if not for the mistakes in Monaco, Great Britain, France, and Hungary. A 100 point swing that would right now see Leclerc leading the driver’s standings by about 20 points and Ferrari being ahead of Red Bull in the constructor’s by about 30 points.
It has gotten to a point for Ferrari where even their own drivers are questioning their strategy week in and week out, with Leclerc saying after the grand prix “everything was under control” on the medium compound before the switch and eventual fall to finishing 16 seconds behind eventual winner Verstappen, and even though they won in Britain, tried to “invent” things for Carlos Sainz to do to protect Leclerc even though he’d be miles quicker. At what point do the higher ups at Ferrari see that nearly every grand prix the last month, both Sainz and Leclerc do not even understand why the team is making the calls they’re making? At what point do they realize the structure and decisions being made under Binotto’s leadership are not championship winning decisions? It has to come to a point where Ferrari see they will never win anything under Binotto, and that point should be realized over the break. When they have a long and hard time to look at this season as a whole.
On a weekend where both Red Bull’s were down in P10 and P11 on a track that is near Monaco levels of overtaking, Ferrari yet again blundered what could have been another big weekend for them to regain their footing in the driver’s and constructor’s championships. Instead, Leclerc sits 80 points adrift of Verstappen and Ferrari 97 points adrift of Red Bull. If Ferrari want any hope of salvaging either championship for Leclerc or the team, someone needs to see red from the Scuderia, and that someone is Mattia Binotto.