How to Lose a Formula 1 Championship, As Told by Ferrari

Ferrari started out the 2022 season strong, giving its car two shakedowns before pre-season testing even started. In testing itself, Ferrari impressed by clocking 349 laps and facing few reliability issues; Formula 1 was convinced the team had an impressively quick car on its hands.

The first race of the season in Bahrain set Ferrari up as the team to beat in 2022. Leclerc scored pole position and led his teammate to a 1-2 finish for the Prancing Horse, scoring fastest lap in the process. The run was so smooth that Leclerc even had time to crack a joke about his engine failing on his way to a dominant win — aided in part due to Max Verstappen’s race retirement.

Team principal Mattia Binotto seemed to understand that it wasn’t time to relax just yet, saying that the team couldn’t “afford a wrong step” in the race to develop a successful car based on new regulations.

• Final Results: 1st (Charles Leclerc), 2nd (Carlos Sainz Jr.), Pole (Leclerc), Fastest Lap (Leclerc)
• Drivers’ Championship Standings: 1st (Leclerc, 26 points), 2nd (Sainz Jr., 18 points)
• Constructors’ Championship Standings: 1st (44 points)

Alright, well, the high of the first win of the season didn’t last long. In Saudi Arabia, Red Bull’s Max Verstappen took the win — but only by a meager 0.5 seconds, further bolstering Ferrari’s hopes that it might just have something special in the bag for 2022.

But the first cracks in the team began to show. During Friday practice, both Ferrari drivers brushed the wall. Damage was minor, but it prevented the team from trying out any high-fuel race simulation runs. Not dire by any means — but not exactly the tone you’d want to set for the rest of the season, either. Sainz also seemed to realize something was up, telling Motorsport.com that the start to the season had been a challenging one despite his successes.

• Final Results: 2nd (Leclerc), 3rd (Sainz Jr.), Fastest Lap (Leclerc)
• Drivers’ Championship Standings: 1st (Leclerc, 45 points), 2nd (Sainz Jr., 33 points)
• Constructors’ Championship Standings: 1st (77 points)

Charles Leclerc was dominant during the Australian Grand Prix weekend, but his teammate wasn’t quite as lucky. Carlos Sainz Jr. pushed his car beyond its limits at the start, resulting in the team’s first retirement of the season.

• Final Results: 1st (Leclerc), RET (Sainz Jr), Pole (Leclerc), Fastest Lap (Leclerc)
• Drivers’ Championship Standings: 1st (Leclerc), 3rd (Sainz Jr.)
• Constructors’ Championship Standings: 1st (104 points)

Fox Sports called the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix “agony” for both Ferrari drivers, and that wasn’t quite far off. As per Motorsport, it was the only team that didn’t bring any updated parts to the first European round of the season, and Carlos Sainz once again ended up stuck in the gravel for another retirement. Leclerc, for his own part, had a decent weekend until he pushed too hard for third place and spun in the final 10 laps of the race. The Race categorized the team as one of the weekend’s “losers,” saying Ferrari couldn’t afford another disastrous weekend like that if it intended to maintain its title hopes.

• Final Results: 6th (Leclerc), RET (Sainz Jr.)
• Drivers’ Championship Standings: 1st (Leclerc), 5th (Sainz Jr.)
• Constructors’ Championship Standings: 1st (124 points)

It was another complex weekend for Ferrari in Miami. While Leclerc took pole and both drivers finished second and third, it came at a cost. Sainz had a heavy crash on Friday, saying afterward that the car was still finding ways to surprise him. During the race itself, Ferrari thought it might have an advantage thanks to its previous success on low-speed circuits, but Verstappen and Red Bull proved to be dominant. According to Binotto, Red Bull was so successful because “I believe it’s in the fact that they have got upgrades in the last races that have made their car simply faster.” Meanwhile, Leclerc reasoned that Red Bull was better at managing the degradation of the softer tires during long race runs.

• Final Results: 2nd (Leclerc), 3rd (Sainz Jr.), Pole (Leclerc)
• Drivers’ Championship Standings: 1st (Leclerc), 5th (Sainz Jr.)
• Constructors’ Championship Standings: 1st (157 points)

A return to Europe and some new technical upgrades didn’t come with much success for Ferrari, either. Leclerc retired from the race after his turbo and MGU-H failed; Binotto called it “sudden,” and it was believed to be a one-off. Meanwhile, Carlos Sainz Jr. finished fourth after a spin, admitting that he was still struggling with the car but couldn’t talk about it because he’d share private technical secrets in doing so. It had become clear that reliability would be a difficult point for Ferrari — and by the sixth race of the season, it had cost them their lead in both the Drivers’ and Constructors’ Championships.

• Final Results: 4th (Sainz Jr.), RET (Leclerc), Pole (Leclerc)
• Drivers’ Championship Standings: 2nd (Leclerc), 5th (Sainz Jr.)
• Constructors’ Championship Standings: 2nd (169 points)

A pole position at Monaco can, in many cases, be a guaranteed victory thanks to the track’s notoriously tight turns, but it wasn’t to be. Ferrari mistimed its drivers pit stops when it came time to switch from wet-weather tires to intermediates, and a later stop for Leclerc was slow, dropping him back yet again. Being held up by other, slower drivers also caused headaches for Ferrari — headaches that Red Bull didn’t have.

Ferrari, as a last ditch effort, tried to raise a protest against Red Bull for crossing the yellow pitlane exist line. The protest failed. Despite that, team principal Mattia Binotto claimed the failures “will make us stronger.”

• Final Results: 2nd (Sainz Jr.), 4th (Leclerc), Pole (Leclerc)
• Drivers’ Championship Standings: 2nd (Leclerc), 5th (Sainz Jr.)
• Constructors’ Championship Standings: 2nd (199 points)

Things only proceeded to get worse for the outfit from Maranello, with both drivers retiring from the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. While Red Bull was expected to dominate due to the high-speed nature of the track, Ferrari made it easy on its rivals by suffering from engine failure across the board.

Charles Leclerc was baffled, as reported in Motorsport.com: “We’ve been fast and we didn’t have particularly big problems in the first part of the season. Now, it seems that we have a bit more compared to the beginning of the season, when we didn’t change anything. If anything, we made the thing better.”

Mattia Binotto seemed equally confused, but he was able to look on the bright side: He would rather have a fast but unreliable car than a slow but reliable one.

• Final Results: RET (Leclerc, Sainz Jr.), Pole (Leclerc)
• Drivers’ Championship Standings: 3rd (Charles Leclerc), 5th (Carlos Sainz Jr.)
• Constructors’ Championship Standings: 2nd (199 points)

Carlos Sainz Jr. left the Canadian Grand Prix content that he had finally found the speed he’d lacked with Ferrari all season, but it wasn’t enough to help him maintain a lead on race day after a pit stop call from the team prevented him from competing with Verstappen for the lead. Perhaps that was because Binotto was busy contesting the FIA’s regulatory changes that were designed to help reduce porpoising.

• Final Results: 2nd (Sainz Jr.), 5th (Leclerc), Fastest Lap (Sainz Jr.)
• Drivers’ Championship Standings: 3rd (Leclerc), 5th (Sainz Jr.)
• Constructors’ Championship Standings: 2nd (228 points)

The British Grand Prix was a triumph for Carlos Sainz Jr., who took victory after a lengthy red-flag period to clean up Zhou Guanyu’s nasty crash into the barriers. But that victory came with a Ferrari strategy gamble: As the team’s tires wore down, it had a critical decision to make. It could pit Sainz, Leclerc, or both. Ferrari only chose to pit Sainz, and that fresher rubber gave Sainz the jump he needed to pass his teammate, who failed to hold track position on old tires.

It was hard to tell at a time, but that call likely had a significant impact on the Championship. Leclerc wasn’t able to scrape together the points he needed to close the gap to leader Max Verstappen or to give himself a boost from third to fourth in the Championship — points that would quickly become critical as the season progressed.

• Final Results: 1st (Sainz Jr.), 4th (Leclerc), Pole (Sainz Jr.)
• Drivers’ Championship Standings: 3rd (Leclerc), 4th (Sainz Jr.)
• Constructors’ Championship Standings: 2nd (265 points)

After an intense team battle during the sprint race for second place, Leclerc was able to take victory at the Austrian Grand Prix — but it came at a cost. Carlos Sainz was sitting in third place and gunning for second when his engine quite literally imploded and burst into flames. Throttle issues, too, plagued Leclerc all the way to the end of the race. While Leclerc was able to bounce back to second in the Championship standings, Sainz was unable to scrape together any points for the team.

“It’s certainly a concern, but the people back at Maranello are working very hard try to fix things. Obviously, looking at what happened to Carlos, it has not been solved yet,” Binotto said. “But we have new elements and I know how strong they are working and how good they are. I can count on them that it will be addressed very soon, and hopefully as soon as possible.”

• Final Results: 1st (Leclerc), RET (Sainz Jr.)
• Drivers’ Championship Standings: 2nd (Leclerc), 4th (Sainz Jr.)
• Constructors’ Championship Standings: 2nd (303 points)

The French Grand Prix came with absolute disaster. For once, Ferrari looked to have better control over pace and tire degradation than Red Bull, and Leclerc established a comfortable lead of the race early on — only to crash on lap 18. A radio message of Leclerc complaining about throttle raised fears that Ferrari would have a significant problem throughout the season, but Binotto denied that that was the case.

Carlos Sainz, meanwhile, charged from 19th on the grid to fourth, battling hard with Red Bull’s Sergio Perez for third — only to be told to pit just as he began overtaking Perez. Forced to serve a five-second penalty at the same time, Sainz was frustrated and tried to make sense of it all after the race: “I’m sure when they show me the numbers from the data and the tires that they strongly believe that I would not have made it to the end, we have to trust the numbers because it is what we base our strategy on. I’m sure they did it with the best of intentions.

• Final Results: 5th (Sainz Jr.), RET (Leclerc), Pole (Leclerc), Fastest Lap (Sainz Jr.)
• Drivers’ Championship Standings: 2nd (Leclerc), 4th (Sainz Jr.)
• Constructors’ Championship Standings: 2nd (314 points)

The Hungarian Grand Prix was, frankly, a disaster from the strategic side of things. Leclerc was fighting for a win when Ferrari decided to switch him to the hard-compound tires in cold-weather conditions. Binotto claimed that, in the team’s simulations, the hard tire would take longer to warm up but would ultimately be faster in the closing stages. That was not the case, and Leclerc only managed to finish sixth.

“I made it clear that the medium I wanted to keep it as long as possible, but we pitted very early for the hard, which we need to understand why,” Leclerc said. “We had to pit [again] quite early, because [the] hard was just incredibly difficult.” He reasoned that Red Bull’s call to bring Verstappen in for an early pit stop lead to Ferrari’s sudden change in strategy.

• Final Results: 4th (Sainz Jr.), 6th (Leclerc)
• Drivers’ Championship Standings: 2nd (Leclerc), 5th (Sainz Jr.)
• Constructors’ Championship Standings: 2nd (334 points)

While Carlos Sainz Jr. managed a podium, Leclerc lost important ground in the Championship battle when he was handed a five-second penalty after the race for exceeding the pit lane speed limit as a result of a visor tear-off jamming the sensor.

That late-race pit stop wasn’t even necessary; Ferrari had brought Leclerc in to change tires and send him off in pursuit of the fastest lap. Binotto claimed it was “the right decision,” but Leclerc lost his second place in the WDC, and Verstappen had opened a near-100 point gap over him by winning the race.

• Final Results: 3rd (Sainz Jr.), 6th (Leclerc), Pole (Sainz Jr.)
• Drivers’ Championship Standings: 3rd (Leclerc), 4th (Sainz Jr.)
• Constructors’ Championship Standings: 2nd (357 points)

A podium for Leclerc bumped the driver back up to second in the Championship standings at the Dutch Grand Prix, but Sainz wasn’t as lucky. He failed to match his teammate’s pace and dropped through the field, claiming that “the whole race was a bit of a pain for me” because he simply had no way to battle with other drivers. A heavy crash for Sainz during practice, though, could have resulted in his lack of pace — or a hot mess of a pit stop could have been the culprit of the poor finishing position, as Ferrari entirely failed to have a left-rear tire ready for Sainz when he was called into the pits.

• Final Results: 3rd (Leclerc), 8th (Sainz Jr.)
• Drivers’ Championship Standings: 2nd (Leclerc), 5th (Sainz Jr.)
• Constructors’ Championship Standings: 2nd (376 points)

Ferrari mustered up a decent weekend at Monza, though it must be said that almost half the grid took engine penalties that relegated them to the rear of the starting grid. A second and a fourth for its drivers was perhaps better than Ferrari could have hoped for, but because the race ended under a safety car, there was no chance for one final attack.

• Final Results: 2nd (Leclerc), 4th (Sainz Jr.), Pole (Leclerc)
• Drivers’ Championship Standings: 2nd (Leclerc), 5th (Sainz Jr.)
• Constructors’ Championship Standings: 2nd (406 points)

Though not a win, Ferrari’s 2-3 at Singapore was a welcome reprieve from a difficult season, but it came with its own questions: After the race, Leclerc said he was “surprised” that race winner Perez was able to build such a gap between himself and the following cars so quickly. He went on to note that he felt Ferrari was just as quick as Red Bull at multiple stages in the race — it just happened that Perez’s tires reached their peak just as he slipped out of DRS range.

• Final Results: 2nd (Leclerc), 3rd (Sainz Jr.), Pole (Leclerc)
• Drivers’ Championship Standings: 2nd (Leclerc), 5th (Sainz Jr.)
• Constructors’ Championship Standings: 2nd (439 points)

The World Drivers’ Championship was settled in Suzuka. That result was, likely, inevitable, but a five-second penalty handed to Leclerc at the end of the race awarded Verstappen the Championship. The whole event was a confusing one, though; heavy rain delayed the completion of the race, and only about 50 percent of race distance was finished. Leclerc’s penalty initially didn’t seem severe enough to hand Verstappen the title, but some semantic alterations in the rulebook meant that the race was scored with full points, not partial points. Most everyone only realized that Verstappen had won in parc fermé.

To add insult to injury, Sainz retired after the first lap.

• Final Results: 3rd (Leclerc), RET (Sainz Jr.)
• Drivers’ Championship Standings: 3rd (Leclerc), 5th (Sainz Jr.)
• Constructors’ Championship Standings: 2nd (454 points)

After securing a pole position, Carlos Sainz Jr. was knocked out of the race thanks to a first-lap collision with George Russell. A late-race safety car afforded a restart that looked to make things interesting, but the battle was firmly between Mercedes and Red Bull; Leclerc’s third-place finish was comforting for Ferrari, but at the conclusion of the event, the Prancing Horse was firmly removed from all hopes of winning the World Constructors’ Title, which went to Red Bull instead.

• Final Results: 3rd (Leclerc), RET (Sainz Jr.), Pole (Sainz Jr.)
• Drivers’ Championship Standings: 2nd (Leclerc), 5th (Sainz Jr.)
• Constructors’ Championship Standings: 2nd (469 points)

Charles Leclerc called the Mexico City Grand Prix one of Ferrari’s worst and expressed hope that it would be a “one-off” — but so close to the end of the season, that sentiment didn’t hold much meaning. The team was usurped in performance by Mercedes, which found a comfortable form in Mexico. According to Leclerc, the team was “in the middle of nowhere.” Even worse, Mercedes drew so close to Ferrari’s points standings in the WCC that it threatened to nab second from the Prancing Horse just at the close of the season.

Mattia Binotto claimed that the team “didn’t have the capacity to run maximum power” but that there were, once again, no clear reasons as to why.

• Final Results: 5th (Sainz Jr.), 6th (Leclerc)
• Drivers’ Championship Standings: 3rd (Leclerc), 6th (Sainz Jr.)
• Constructors’ Championship Standings: 2nd (487 points)

It was yet another disastrous strategy for Ferrari during the São Paulo Grand Prix. Leclerc was the only driver sent out into the final qualifying session with wet tires, and the rain only came after his competition had set their laps. Sainz’s hopes at finishing higher on the podium were dashed when he had to take an early first stop due to a visor caught in his brake duct, but the real talking point of the weekend was the rare Red Bull fumble, which left Ferrari higher in the finishing order.

• Final Results: 3rd (Sainz Jr.), 4th (Leclerc)
• Drivers’ Championship Standings: 2nd (Leclerc, tied), 6th (Sainz Jr.)
• Constructors’ Championship Standings: 2nd (524 points)

Heading into the final race of 2022, Leclerc and Red Bull’s Perez were tied in the Drivers’ Championship, and Mercedes was still within reach to snag the Constructors’ Championship from the Italian outfit. Most teams opted to split tire strategy between drivers, making for an interesting race — the end of which saw Ferrari cling to second in both the WDC and WCC.

• Final Results: 2nd (Leclerc), 4th (Sainz Jr.)
• Drivers’ Championship Standings: 2nd (Leclerc), 5th (Sainz Jr.)
• Constructors’ Championship Standings: 2nd (554 points)

Was Ferrari’s 2022 season an abject failure? Not by any means — for the first time in years, the Prancing Horse has looked both impressive and competitive, but it’s clear that there’s still far more work to be done if it wants to actively contend for a Championship in the near future. The team’s early season confidence is hard to look at in retrospect, knowing how quickly Ferrari bungled its own lead through odd strategy, poor pit stops, or unreliability.

The dust has only just settled on the 2022 F1 season, so it’s far too early to start making calls on how things will look for 2023. But if history has shown us one thing, it’s that the Championship-winning team in the first year of a new set of technical regulations tends to maintain that dominance going forward. Ferrari’s mistakes paved the way for Red Bull’s easy ride — but Red Bull, with its penalties for overspending the series cost cap, isn’t guaranteed a 2023 win just yet. If Ferrari can learn from its mistakes, it could just find itself en route to victory.