"It seems there is so much pressure internally" - Strategic blunders are 'part of Ferrari's history', says Mercedes man

Ferrari made a mess of its strategy in the 2022 F1 Monaco GP. After starting the race on the front row, it ended up making blunders during the pit stops that dropped race leader Charles Leclerc out of podium contention and gave Sergio Perez the win.

Former Mercedes vice-president and a prominent figure in the paddock, Norbert Haug, felt the Italian team jostles with too much internal pressure that leads to these kinds of strategic disasters. Terming it as "a stroke of genius that was unneccesary," Haug talked about how the team's history is full of such strategic blunders that happen from time to time and in effect ruin brilliant results. He said:

“What Ferrari did in Monaco will certainly not go down in motorsport history as a great moment of strategy, but rather as a stroke of genius that was as unnecessary as it was self-manufactured. From the outside, it seems there is so much pressure internally at Ferrari to make decisions particularly well, when perfectly normal decisions would be a much better choice.”

Haug further went on to add, saying:

“Ferrari certainly tripped themselves up in Monaco, turning a sure win for their title contender [Charles] Leclerc into a fourth-place finish and giving his rival Max Verstappen a completely unnecessary and, in the worst-case scenario, possibly World Championship-deciding gift. Unfortunately, it is part of Ferrari’s history that such blunders happen from time to time and thus torpedo otherwise brilliant results. At the next race, the pressure will not be less in this way.”

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We underestimated the speed of the intermediates: Ferrari

Team boss Mattia Binotto admitted after the race that there was surely a misstep in strategy from the team that resulted in Charles Leclerc losing the race. Binotto touched on how the team might have underestimated the impact of the intermediates tires that Sergio Perez had after his pitstop, saying:

“Certainly disappointing I think for the result. I fully understand the disappointment for Charles [Leclerc] as well, he was first and finishing fourth means that something was wrong in the decision we made. So clearly we need to review it and I think we underestimated the speed of the intermediate at that stage and so we could have called a lap earlier for Charles or later on, maybe we should have left him outside on the extreme wet then going on the dry. These are mistakes that may happen but more importantly, it is a lesson to learn to try and understand why they happened and I am sure that is a process we will do it.”

Charles Leclerc has fallen 9 points behind Max Verstappen in the championship and that is not because he has faltered at any point in the races. A DNF at Barcelona and a strategy error in Monaco have significantly compromised Leclerc's charge to the title.