Charles Leclerc lost a toilet captain.
After starting with three wins, his results slipped and the score in the last eight races was almost as scary – the podium.
After the Hungarian Grand Prix, Charles Leclerc is 80 points behind Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, and looking back at the last eight races he could have done better in all seven of which he missed the podium.
The problems started in Barcelona where he broke down after the car broke down while in the lead. In Monaco, Ferrari made disastrously poor strategic decisions, and in Baku it broke when it was in the lead. In Canada he got a penalty at the start which meant he had to chase it down the field, at Silverstone the strategy was a failure again, in France he made a mistake in the lead and in Hungary the team again made a bad strategic decision.
– I don’t know why we chose to take the hard tires at the second stop. It worked really well with the medium tires and I can’t really understand why they made that decision. Charles Leclerc said after the race that the latter part of the race was disastrous.
– We lost the race there.
Sky expert Ralf Schumacher is more stern in his criticism:
Ferrari actually made the wrong decision on Friday as he used the wrong tires while training. It was bitter for Ferrari and I absolutely can’t fathom the last stopping point when switching to soft tyres. There they gave two positions, more, he told Sky.
I don’t think Red Bull expected to get the same amount of help in Hungary as they did.
It gives the following results for Charles Leclerc 2022:
Spain DNF
Monaco 4
Baku DNF
Canada 5
Great Britain 4
Austria 1
France DNF
Hungary 6
If you want to read more about the Hungarian Formula 1 Grand Prix and Ferrari’s failure, do so here.
Mercedes is satisfied having podiumed twice, two races weekend in a row, and Andrew Shulin was positive:
– We need more to achieve our first win of the season, but it seems that we are getting closer with each passing week, as quoted by www.0123go.com.
– But we were pleased to see how hard the team and drivers worked on developing the car.
Now the team has nine races left to stop Mercedes from winning – for the first time in nine years.
$15 million – annually
Aston Martin bid farewell to Sebastian Vettel and replaced him with Fernando Alonso. There’s the same amount of experience, but not at all the same political commitment and a great deal of anger. Nobody is as stubborn and a big winner as Fernando Alonso, but nobody is angry when things don’t go their way either.
Remember the failure with McLaren Honda that led to him leaving Formula One for a while? It will be interesting to see if he and Lance Stroll get along with the passage of time – and whether he and Lawrence Stroll get along with the passage of time. The new contract spans several years and according to Blake, Alonso, 41, will earn $15 million annually.
You can read more about Fernando Alonso and Aston Martin here.