Is Ferrari’s strategy team partly to blame for Charles Leclerc’s retirement at Zandvoort? Data shows: Ferrari probably underestimated the undercut risk
Ferrari had a bitter afternoon at the Dutch Grand Prix. First, Lewis Hamilton retired after a crash in turn three, then later his teammate Charles Leclerc was caught out at the same spot after Mercedes junior Andrea Kimi Antonelli drove into his car. But was it just bad luck, or did Ferrari play a part in the Monegasque driver’s retirement?
Leclerc’s radio message immediately after the retirement raises questions, as he was not angry with Mercedes, but questioned a strategic decision made by his team: “I think that was unnecessary. I mean, we’ll never know what would have happened, but the tires still felt good. Well, I’m getting out of the car now.”
Did Ferrari underestimate the power of the undercut?
But what had happened before? Antonelli pitted at the end of lap 51 for a second tire change—a clear attempt to undercut Leclerc, who was two seconds ahead of him on the track. Mercedes switched from older C2 tires to soft tires. Normally, a two-second gap is too much to pull off an undercut, but it was very powerful at Zandvoort, as we had already seen earlier in the race.
When Lance Stroll in the Aston Martin switched from mediums to new hard tires on lap eight, the Canadian was around 1.5 seconds faster than his teammate Fernando Alonso in the phase that followed. However, it must be said that this was not entirely due to the tire delta, as the Spaniard was stuck in traffic. Nevertheless, it gave an indication of the power of the undercut.
Back to Antonelli and Leclerc. Antonelli’s tire delta on new soft tires was a whopping 29 laps compared to the old hard tires on the Ferrari. The wear on the C2 tires averaged 0.039 seconds per lap, which means that the Mercedes initially had an advantage of 1.131 seconds simply because of fresher tires. Added to this is the performance difference between C2 and C4, which can easily amount to another half a second at the start of a stint.
Fast Ferrari pit stop saves Leclerc – for now
The math makes it clear: even with a seemingly solid two-second lead, Ferrari was playing with fire, because a marginally slower pit stop could have meant the end of their gamble against Mercedes.
However, Scuderia Ferrari is the team with the consistently fastest pit stops this season, and that was also the case in Zandvoort. Leclerc’s stop on lap 52 took just 2.12 seconds, while Antonelli spent 2.53 seconds at the Mercedes pit one lap earlier. And those four tenths were sorely needed for Leclerc.
When the Monegasque driver returned to the track from the pits, Antonelli was suddenly only 0.465 seconds behind. Adjusted for the slower pit stop time, the Mercedes undercut was worth almost exactly two seconds. Everyone saw what happened next: Antonelli saw his chance with warmer tires in turn three and there was contact.
Should Ferrari have left Leclerc out?
So it’s not just Leclerc’s radio message that leads to the conclusion that Ferrari may have taken too big a risk with the second stop. But could Leclerc have held his position against Antonelli on old tires?
With 20 laps to go and a calculated tire delta of around 1.5 seconds, the Italian would definitely have caught up with the Ferrari again, but could he have overtaken? The problem with the soft C4 tires would have been that they wear out much faster and the performance advantage over Leclerc would have continued to shrink.
The soft tires wore down by an average of 0.064 seconds per lap during the race. Extrapolated, Antonelli’s tire delta compared to Leclerc’s old hard tires would have been only seven tenths by the end of the race. At the same time, the overtaking delta required at Zandvoort was probably a full second per lap.
Alonso as a reference: That’s how difficult overtaking would have been for Antonelli!
One indication of this is an undercut attempt by Fernando Alonso in the middle of the race, when the Spaniard was a full two seconds per lap faster than other midfield drivers in traffic. However, when he caught up with the pack, Alonso struggled despite being two seconds faster and had difficulty getting past the Sauber cars, for example. However, they were also in a DRS train and were therefore able to defend themselves more easily, which would not have been the case with Leclerc.
In summary, it must be said that Ferrari probably underestimated the undercut threat from Antonelli, because it took an absolutely brilliant pit stop to keep the Mercedes behind them, and it was damn close. Leclerc could probably have kept Antonelli behind him without another stop, but that would not have been without risk either. Ultimately, it was simply a good strategic move by Mercedes.
A detailed analysis of the strategies at the Dutch Grand Prix is available on the Formel1.de YouTube channel, where data expert Kevin Hermann also takes a closer look at the strategies of Red Bull, Haas, and Aston Martin and clearly quantifies how vastly superior McLaren really was.
