There are three strategy decisions that lead to the less than ideal Q3 for Charles and all of them, somewhat inexplicably, were apparently made by Charles. It would seem he is now in charge of deciding what the tire strategy plan is for Sunday and therefore how Ferrari allocates the tires for the entire weekend. In addition to apparently being in charge of Ferrari’s big picture plan for the weekend, he is now also making determinations for the pit wall on timing and the run plan on the fly during qualifying. Someone give this man a raise – he’s doing everybody’s job. Jokes aside I do want them to listen to Charles in general but the thing is they don’t – and to start with decisions that are so obviously massively impacted by information that Charles has no way of knowing is wild. As is the assumption that Charles was being given a full and accurate picture of the LARGE NUMBER of underlying factors that he would need to know about to have any hope of making the right call. This is, in my opinion another very blatant example of blame shifting by a team that, to an almost pathological degree, must always ensure that anything that goes wrong is 100% the drivers fault.
The Tire Determination
Let’s start with the tire situation. Charles wanted an extra set of mediums for the race meaning that he entered Qualifying with only 4 sets of softs, meaning that ideally he would be able to make it through Q1 & Q2 with one lap on new tires.
As the Race helpfully lays out: “He [Charles] did not help matters by going for a late run at the end of Q2 with a new soft. This lap, part of an insurance run, was aborted early on – but will have taken the best off the tyres for Q3. Team-mate Hamilton was marginally ahead in the Q2 pecking order at that point and was left in the pits by Ferrari. He admitted it had been a nervy few minutes given how close Q1 had been, but enthusiastically described it as ‘a good call by the team.’” [The Race, 5/31/25]
Notice that the decision to go for another lap that ultimately he obviously didn’t need was Charles’ but Lewis’ decision to not go out for another lap was made by the team. Perfectly possible that Charles insisted on going again but it’s just crazy that it works out that the bad decisions are made by the driver and the good ones by the team every. single. time.
“‘I take responsibility for it because the team had pushed for a different choice,’ he admitted to Sky Sports. ‘I did all these choices in order to have better tyres for tomorrow’s race,’ he then elaborated to the written press. ‘If tomorrow we have a very bad race, then I’ll have to take the responsibility for a bad weekend.’” [*The Race,* 5/31/25]
Charles is the only one among the top teams (using that term rather liberally) to opt to save two sets of mediums for the race. Why? To me Charles saying he wanted “better tires” for the race tomorrow makes it clear. The race is expected to be a 2 stop, everyone is (prob) going to use softs and mediums for 2 of the stints. The analysis of tires comes into play with the third set. Based on data from practice teams must weigh the pros and cons of using a medium or a hard tire. There are a number of considerations at play here:
- How much of a pace disadvantage is the hard? This is fairly easy to determine by looking at comprable runs from both cars on both tires. They can also gain additional info by looking at comprable lap times on both tires from other teams because even though they have a different level of tire wear each car is still consistent across the two sets.
- Will the medium last well enough to make it an advantage throughout the whole stint? This is trickier determining how long a tire will last is essentially black magic to me but at a very high level it’s a math problem that they use their practice data to solve. They also have to factor in how they think the weather on race day will differ from practice and whenever Ferrari starts predicting the whether we’re in trouble.
Both of these questions are things that Charles can also feel out for himself to an extent but serious Formula one things are calculating these things based on more than vibes. The final consideration is where a drivers vibes are actually the more important factor in the decision:
- If the medium is determined to be more advantageous than the hard for the 3rd stint, is that advantage to the scale that it’s worth the disadvantage in qualifying presented by only having 4 sets of softs? The determination about the extent to which the medium would provide an advantage should be determined through the analysis of quantitative data by the team. The worthiness of the risk however is far more down to the drivers confidence level in regards to quali.
To me it’s fairly clear that Ferrari must have made a determination about that advantage that was more positive about the mediums than the other teams for Charles to take that risk. Because while he is a confident qualifier and a risk taker, the Ferrari car’s abysmal qualifying pace this year would make it a far riskier proposition (& therefore require a bigger medium vs. hard advantage to make it worthwhile) in comparison to McLaren who has sailed through Q1 & Q2 all year. McLaren’s decision to not opt for the two medium route is especially damning because they have magic wheels that make their tires not degrade. I’m joking but they are, as has been discussed at length, much kinder on the tires than the others. Meaning that the relative advantage of the medium would be greater for them because they could push it harder for longer and have a better chance of sustaining the pace advantage through the stint. Given the decreased risk to their qualifying and increased advantage of the medium the fact that they still opted against saving two mediums makes me think that Ferrari’s determination of that advantage is off.
It’s possible they are correct and the hard tire is a total flop but pinning everything on Charles’ decision not to risk it ignores the underlying the determinations and analysis that he is using to make the decision about if he should risk it. It also makes sense that Lewis would choose to play it safe even in the pace of a potentially generous assessment of the mediums given his own statements about his confidence level in qualifying right now. It’s the Silverstone weather situation all over again where yes, Charles made the tyre call, but he did so based on inaccurate information about the rain.
Or maybe Ferrari’s assessment of the hard tires will be true and everyone else will regret their choice but it’s difficult to have faith in their analysis given all that has come before. It’s also possible their assessment was the same as everyone else’s and Charles, knowing that Spain is often a strategy game, just said fuck it. But I think the assumption that one of these is the case because the information Ferrari is presenting Charles with is automatically 100% accurate is insane.
The Second Q2 Run
Regardless, this still could have been the right move were it not for two critical mistakes during the Qualifying session made by Charles Leclerc who has apparently been given 100% control over his run plan despite not having any of the data from 19 other cars required to make a quantitative determination about track evolution; any way to determine where the 19 other cars are on the track or even if they are on track; information about the weather also required to make a call about track evolution; or a calculator to do all of the fucking math required to figure this shit out. Presumably all of this incredibly complex data is being given to him through the radio since you would need it to make the calls because most modern F1 teams are making this determination based on a shitload of quantitative information.
The first problem is, as discussed above, that Charles went out a second time for an insurance run in Q2 that he did not need. I have not seen in discussed directly that Charles insisted on going out again but since Charles is calling all the shots now apparently lets assume that he did. No driver has any way of determining what the cutoff time is from within the cockpit it is on Ferrari to make that determination. Assuming that they did and correctly assessed that he would be safe, the fact that Charles defied them means that he does not trust the accuracy of the information he gets from the team. There are really only two things that could have happened here: either Ferrari were wrong about the cutoff time and they sent him out to waste a set of tires he needed in Q3; or they were correct but they have fucked Charles over so many times before that he would rather only get one lap in Q3 than trust their assessment. Both scenarios are pretty damning in regards to the efficacy of that pit wall.
What I find really confusing (and why I don’t totally buy that Charles insisted) is before the session the cutoff time should have been discussed and then adjusted based on how the session times line up with their predictions. Bernie Collins tells us (with ~4:14 left in Q2 on the Sky broadcast) that a 1:12.6 is the predicted safe zone but looking at track evolution she would feel confident in a 1:12.5/1:12.4.
The lap times after the first Q2 lap were as follows:
Oscar: 1:11.998
Lando → 1:12.056 (+.058)
Max → 1:12.358 (+.360)
George → 1:12.407 (+.409)
Lewis → 1:12:447 (+.449)
Charles → 1:12.495 (+.497)
Fernando →1:12.523 (+.525)
Pierre → 1:12.611 (+.613)
Kimi → 1:12.752 (+.752)
Isack → 1:12.992 (+.994)
Bortoletto → 1:13.046 (+1.048)
Lawson → 1:13.102 (+1.104)
Alex → 1:13.113 (+1.115)
Lance → 1:13.408 (+1.410)
Ollie → 1:13.650 (+1.652)
So you’re telling me that Charles Leclerc was so concerned with the track evolution that he insisted on going out again even though he was comfortably within that window he presumably has full knowledge of since he’s the one making all the decisions now. Yet, when it came time to do his one and only run in Q3, he decided that the opportunity to do another run on used tires just in case outweighed the track evolution advantage? An advantage that, by the way, was compounded by the dropping temp that I am sure Ferrari communicated to Charles to include in his calculations.
Timing of the Q3 Run
Charles does say that the team was pushing him to go later but he wanted to go earlier so if something went wrong he would have another go.
“I take full responsibility for the way that qualifying has gone, it was my choice. And in Q3 it was my choice to go in the middle when the team was pushing me to go to the end. I still wanted to have a plan B in case that one lap wasn’t going to plan, a mistake or whatever, I wanted the chance to have a second lap. So that’s on me.” [*The Race,* 5/31/25]
The thing is, in light of the decision to not go again on used tires (which I’m assuming was made by Charles as all decisions are now), that logic makes no sense. I guess you could say that if he really fucked up a run on used tires would be better than nothing but given the fact that it was apparently determined that there was no chance of improvement on a p7 time with used tires it seems like you would have been pretty fucked even with the opportunity to go again.
Furthermore this is, once again, a scenario where the team has information Charles doesn’t. It is on them to say no, we can see the temp is dropping because there is a storm in the vicinity. Throughout Q2 the track temp was 47 degrees Celsius, with 10:38 left while both Ferraris are still in the garage it drops two degrees at once to 45 degrees Celsius. With 9:42 left (Charles still in the garage) the track temp drops again to 44 degrees Celsius. When you consider the massive black clouds rolling in a three degree drop in less than a minute suggests that perhaps the track temp is going to continue to decrease throughout the session and indeed by end of the session the track temp had decreased to 41 degrees Celsius. While a 6 degree drop may not be a big deal to us, it is a huge deal to the tires and compounds what was already a fairly significant track evolution situation. The team has shown over and over that they have no problem overruling him even in situations where they were not in a better position to make the call. The idea that all of a sudden Charles is running the show is borderline ludicrous, as is the assumption that all of this information was communicated to him in the decision making process.
To really top the whole thing off they put him out into fucking traffic. I mean it ultimately wasn’t that big of a deal but he did catch both Pierre and Max on their cool down laps. Even if newly minted Team Principal/Lead Strategist/Race Engineer Charles Leclerc has taken on all other decision making responsibility in his new role he is still doesn’t know where the other cars are. They have not installed a driver tracker in his cockpit so the ONE JOB that is apparently remaining for the team is ensure he has a clear track for his lap. He mostly did, I am being dramatic about this but if you are going to cede the advantage of going at the end why not at least do a mid session run like Fernando did??? He was at the back of the first pack but he undoubtedly just did the first run. The exact ideal timing of when Charles goes out onto track simply cannot be determined from within the cockpit to act like that should be his choice is asinine.
In Conclusion
It’s not that I think they’re lying in the strictest sense of the term (although that is certainly a possibility, I think it is far more likely that that pit wall is a mess and when they don’t know what to do they push the decisions off on the driver that should be based on information the driver has no access to. Although there is no way to know because for some reason there is no audio for the driver cams on F1TV & even if there were most of the information would probably be conveyed between each qualifying session, I strongly doubt that Charles is being given the amount accurate information required to make these calls correctly. The fact that every single last good decision was the teams idea & and every single last bad decision was the drivers is quite the coincidence. The fact that they just got caught lying to about with Lewis when the decision was made vis publicly available team radio messages only reinforces my opinion that that it is not, in fact, a coincidence.
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