Ferrari really dropped all the balls this weekend. Sainz has been in the way of other drivers repeatedly, which falls on his engineer who should let him know when cars are coming. In rainy conditions the drivers can’t see jack nothing in their mirrors and it’s like Sainz was just left to his own devices by his engineer.
Honorable mention for Tsunoda doing his best mobile roadblock impression. Holy heck he was constantly in the way this weekend.
Then there is poor Leclerc. He asked for slicks, and his team overruled him and it caused him to be eliminated in Q2. How much longer can he stomach Ferrari incompetence before he starts putting feelers out for a drive elsewhere? As things are going at the Ferrari strategy desk it’s clear the prancing horse has bolted the barn and his chances of getting a championship is in the low zeros.
At this point I feel like a Red Bull drive, where he replaces Perez, is the ideal move for someone as talented as Leclerc. The opening races of the 2022 season really showed that he can keep up with Max on nearly every level. I hope he gets the chance
Unfortunately, as long as Max is at red bull I doubt we will see someone as talented as Leclerc move there. They need a number 2 driver, not someone that can challenge Max.
I would love to see Lando move to red bull if Max goes for an early retirement but realistically they will probably just get tsunoda once checo’s contract expires.
Agreed, they need to find their Bottas 2.0. Perez was filling that role. However, even with such a dominant car, Checo is falling behind the last few races. Would not be surprised if a replacement was called up next year. For sure the year after if there’s is a contract issue.
We were debating this today. Who do you promote? Yuki perhaps?
I feel like the succession plan for Merc and Ferrari have more options than RBR for a Max pairing
Yuki is still too inconsistent, and also to volatile.
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I feel for him. He is one of the fastest drivers in the field, and where others’ (Ham, Russel, Norris, for instance) lack of results this year is mostly down to a bad car package, in Ferrari’s case it’s just strategy and team not listening to their drivers.
I mean the Ferrari is not a slow car, up to Monaco it’s been the second/third fastest car in the field, but the Ferrari clownshoes tripping over themselves has not allowed their drivers to get the most out of the car.
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I agree re the errors. Key difference is that he has zero buffer against the odd error, because when he gets it right Ferrari goes out of their way to screw it up.
And 100% on him trying too hard because he has to try salvage a result against the pitwall’s best attempts to snooker him.
Before I read your reply, I had the sentence “Leclerc is clearly overdriving to compensate for Ferrari”.
You can see it’s eating him up. The Ferrari deeam is not how he imagined at all.
And this reminds me strongly of Vettel’s stint at Ferrari. Just drained the energy out of him.
It was very telling when Leclerc said he thinks he should be on soft and the response over the radio was that Verstappen was on the same tyre as him. That’s not the point!
I really think he want out the team but there’s no other options at the minute.
This is such a want and not based in reality:
Whenever HAM retires, Leclerc making the switch to Merc would just delight me. I’d be really curious how he and George stack up
It’s a shame the timing doesn’t line up better with Leclerc’s contract ending/Hamilton’s retirement (not currently anyway).
Lando still the most likely Mercedes pick for 2026 for me.
I agree on both accounts. Another interesting pairing would be George and Lando. Besides Max (in a bit of a field of his own?) It’s hard to tell how the “middle aged” F1 generation stacks up (Leclerc, Lando, George, Albon, specifically)
Weird to think of those four drivers as middle aged, but they have been around a while now.