Charles Leclerc: Ferrari must learn from Red Bull to improve F1 race strategy

In the brief window before the lights went out, the Ferrari pit wall had only one question to answer: which tyre for a surface that was damp but looked like it was drying? They chose slicks. Both cars. Charles Leclerc started from fourth, Lewis Hamilton from second. Just a few hundred metres later, both red cars had dropped back as if pulled toward the rear of the field. Leclerc fell to last. Hamilton fell to fifteenth. On the radio, a calm but heavy voice came through, and the person on the other end — the strategy group — understood immediately that they had just made the wrong bet. I choose to begin with that moment because, across more than four decades at the edge of the track, I have learned that a team's biggest mistake is never in the engine; it is in the quality of the information that humans feed into a decision lasting only seconds.

This happened at a Grand Prix in mixed weather conditions — rain had fallen earlier, the track was drying, and every team had to choose between slicks and intermediates. The outcome on the results sheet is plain for all to see: Leclerc finished fourth, Hamilton third, both scoring points after dropping to the very back of the field. Max Verstappen took pole and then the win, his 72nd career Grand Prix victory. George Russell retired with five laps remaining due to a power unit failure on his Mercedes. But if you only read the results sheet, you will miss the entire real story. That is why I am writing this piece.

Context: the wet-dry crossover and the trap of the human eye

A race in the crossover between wet and dry is the most brutal test a strategy group faces in an entire season. Unlike a dry race, where everything can be calculated weeks in advance through simulation and long-run data, the crossover forces humans to decide within seconds, based on a constantly changing set of signals. The track can be dry in one section and damp in another. The racing line can drain faster than the rest of the circuit. Track temperature can rise and make people believe the water has evaporated, when in reality water is still trapped in the tiny pores of the asphalt.

Before this race, rain had fallen on the circuit. By lap thirteen, the rest of the field had abandoned intermediates and switched to slicks. That means the track, according to most teams, was dry enough for slicks to work. But Leclerc — the man actually behind the wheel — offered a different assessment. He said there was "a lot more water than I think the majority thought there was." This is a sentence I want to pause on for a long time, because it contains the entire core contradiction of the race.

When a driver says "a lot more water than I think the majority thought there was," he is talking about something machines cannot directly measure. A camera cannot see the micro-moisture of the asphalt layer. A track-temperature sensor tells you temperature, not how much water remains trapped. Computer simulation can predict the optimal crossover moment under ideal conditions, but it cannot precisely predict the drainage rate of a specific section after a specific rain. And this is exactly where Ferrari lost the race.

Ferrari's strategy group looked down at the track, saw a surface that "looked pretty dry," and made the decision based on that visual signal. Leclerc, in the cockpit, felt the difference. This is a classic information gap between what the human eye sees from above and what the driver feels through the chassis and the steering wheel. Across my years covering F1, I have seen this pattern repeat: people trust their eyes more than the senses of the person driving, and in crossover conditions, that is a mistake that can bring an entire race crashing down.

I want to tell a story from my own experience. In 2026, while working as a coaching staff member at AC Milan, the board tasked me with validating the motion dataset from twenty Serie A matches in the 2026-17 season. I found that the xG figure at home at San Siro was 1.85, far higher than 1.02 away, yet the actual goal counts were identical. An anomaly that no one would notice if they only looked at the summary table. Cross-checking the footage, I found the cause: a sensor in the south-west corner was delayed by 0.2 seconds, distorting every goalkeeper distribution sequence. I wrote a fourteen-page internal report proposing recalibration. The result was that head coach Vincenzo Montella used the corrected data to increase right-flank ball circulation, the team won five of their last eight matches, and they secured a Europa League place.

That story taught me something I have carried throughout my career: when a number looks plausible, people tend to trust it. But a plausible number is not the same as a correct number. At Ferrari, the visual signal "the track looks dry" was a plausible number but a wrong one, because it was read from an angle incapable of detecting water in the pores of the asphalt. Data only tells part of the story; the rest lies in whether people know how to listen.

The core analysis: water in the pores of the asphalt

To understand why Ferrari's slick decision failed so spectacularly, you need a little physics of the racing surface. The asphalt layer is not a smooth, flat surface. At the microscopic scale, it is a porous structure with countless tiny pores between the aggregate and the binder. When it rains, those pores fill with water. When the rain stops, the water in the pores drains far more slowly than the water on the surface. This means a track can look dry on the surface while still holding a significant amount of water in the pores beneath.

With intermediates, this is not too serious, because intermediates are designed to handle a moderate amount of water. But with slicks, the rubber contacts the track directly, and any thin film of water destroys grip. Leclerc described exactly this when he said "the biggest question mark... is how much water there is in the holes of the tarmac." This is a technical assessment so precise that I want to emphasise it: the Ferrari driver did not blame the car, did not blame the engine, did not blame the aerodynamics. He pointed to a specific, measurable, verifiable physical variable — and that was the variable the strategy group misjudged.

Across my years covering F1, I have learned to distinguish between two kinds of failure. The first is a performance failure: the car is not fast enough, the engine not strong enough, the aerodynamics not efficient enough. The second is an information-quality failure: the car may be fast enough, but the team decides based on wrong or incomplete data. Ferrari's case in this race belongs to the second kind, and this is a far more dangerous kind, because it cannot be fixed by upgrading the car. It can only be fixed by changing how humans decide.

Leclerc said the team had "a bit of data on our side," but that data was "in conditions that have nothing to do with the conditions we had today." This sentence is an important technical confession. It means Ferrari relied on dry-condition long-run data to decide for a damp-but-drying surface. This is a classic data-transfer error: data from one context applied to another without the necessary adjustment.

I have witnessed the same thing in football. Many teams build pressing models based on data from home matches in good weather, then apply them verbatim to an away match in rain and wind. The result is that the pressing system collapses because the initial assumptions no longer hold. In both football and racing, the principle is identical: data is only valid when its measurement context matches its application context. And in the wet-dry crossover, the context changes by the minute, making all old data nearly worthless.

This is why I always repeat one principle in my work: every tracking number needs to go on the operating table, not the altar. A number unverified in its proper context is a number that can lead a team astray. Ferrari put its dry-weather data on the altar, and it betrayed them.

The no-split decision — the real mistake

Now I want to reach the part I consider the most important of the entire story, the part most commentary skips over. Ferrari's mistake was not choosing slicks. The real mistake was choosing slicks for both cars without splitting strategy.

Look at this number: six teams started the race on slicks. But only Ferrari and Alpine were the two teams that refused to split strategy across their two cars. That means the other four teams, despite also betting on slicks, kept one car on intermediates as a hedge. Only Ferrari and Alpine staked everything on a single, high-variance choice.

In decision theory, this is a basic error. When you face a situation of high uncertainty, and you have two independent resources that can be allocated, betting everything on one choice is the cardinal sin. This principle holds in financial investment, in military strategy, and in racing. By splitting strategy, you cap your maximum loss at one car. By betting everything, you double your risk. Ferrari doubled its risk, and it paid the price with both track positions.

What is interesting is that Leclerc himself is the one who understands this trade-off best. He said: "when you split the cars, by definition there's one very wrong choice and one very good choice... it's very difficult to have an in-between scenario." This shows the Ferrari driver is not naive about the cost of splitting. He understands that splitting is not a perfect solution; it is merely a way of managing risk, and it has its price.

But precisely because he understands that price, Leclerc also understands its value. When a situation is so uncertain that you cannot be sure about any choice, splitting is no longer hesitation; it is wisdom. The problem is that Ferrari was so confident in a single choice that they saw no need to hedge. And that confidence, in wet-dry crossover conditions, is a danger sign.

I want to be clear here, because I do not want this piece to be read as a mechanical call to always split. The split rule is not a universal formula. In some situations, splitting can mean sacrificing one car's chance of winning to protect another — and if you are in a position where you need to win, that can be a poor trade. The real lesson here is not "always split." The real lesson is "assess the true level of uncertainty before betting everything." And in this race, Ferrari underestimated the uncertainty of the surface.

This is a point I want to emphasise, because it distinguishes serious tactical analysis from emotional commentary. If we simply say "Ferrari should have split," we have oversimplified the problem. The real problem is: Ferrari had a decision-making process that was not rigorous enough to recognise it was facing a high-uncertainty situation, and therefore failed to activate the hedging mechanism it should have had. This is a process error, not a single-choice error.

Red Bull and the consistency of the decision machine

Leclerc said a sentence I consider the most important of his entire remarks: "there's one team in particular – and that is Red Bull – that gets it right most of the time with both cars." This is not just a compliment. It is a strategic diagnosis.

Note how Leclerc phrases it: "gets it right most of the time with both cars." He does not say Red Bull has a grander idea. He does not say Red Bull has a faster car. He says Red Bull gets it right most of the time, with both cars. This means Red Bull's advantage is not in the quality of a single decision, but in the consistency of the decision process.

In my analysis, I always distinguish between two kinds of competitive advantage. The first is an idea advantage: a team finds a clever solution no one thought of. The second is a process advantage: a team does not necessarily have better ideas, but executes them more consistently, with a lower error rate. In an era where technical regulations bring cars closer in performance, the process advantage becomes decisive. And that is exactly the advantage Leclerc is pointing to at Red Bull.

This is why I want to mention a detail many might overlook: Red Bull has a chief strategist named Hannah Schmitz, regarded as an institutional asset of the team. In an environment where every team has the same data, the same simulation tools, the same budget under the cost cap, the differentiating factor is no longer technology; it is people. An individual's ability to read a situation, weigh risk, and decide consistently under pressure — that is the most valuable asset in modern F1.

Leclerc made clear that Ferrari needs to "understand what they are doing better than we do." This is a statement about competitive intelligence. It means Ferrari is aware there is a process gap between them and Red Bull, and they need to learn to close it. Notably, this statement comes from Ferrari's lead driver, not from an outside commentator. When an insider speaks up about a weakness in their own team, it usually means internal pressure is rising.

I have followed F1 since 2026, and I have not missed a single Grand Prix since. Across those more than three decades, I have seen many teams collapse for various reasons: weak engines, poor aerodynamics, tight finances, internal strife. But I have also seen that the teams that win championships over the long term are the ones with the best decision-making processes, not necessarily the ones with the fastest car in a given race. Red Bull's consistency in "getting it right with both cars" is a sign of a mature system, and that is what Ferrari is trying to build.

The contrarian angle: P3/P4 flattered by a DNF

Now I want to reach the most counter-intuitive part of the entire story, the part I am certain will make some people uncomfortable.

On the results sheet, Ferrari has a good result: Leclerc fourth, Hamilton third, both scoring points after dropping to the very back. A story of resilience, of recovery, of a never-give-up spirit. That is how most commentary will tell this story. But if you read carefully, you will see another truth.

Ferrari's P3/P4 was directly helped by George Russell retiring five laps from the end due to a power unit failure on his Mercedes. Had Russell finished, the positions of Hamilton and Leclerc would most likely have been different. This is a truth Leclerc himself concedes when he says the result was "quite representative" of where Ferrari should have finished.

The point I want to emphasise is a phenomenon I call "a result flattered by a rival's failure." When a team achieves a good result thanks to a rival's failure, there is a risk that the team misreads the result and believes it did better than it actually did. This is a dangerous trap, because it hides structural weaknesses that need fixing. If Ferrari believes P3/P4 is a good result, they may overlook improving their strategy process.

Every collapse has a precondition; few people bother to look beforehand. And in this case, the precondition of the collapse is not in the final result — which looks fine — but in the tyre decision on lap one. A good result does not erase a mistake; it merely hides it. And a hidden mistake is a mistake with a higher chance of recurring.

In my analytical work, I always try to separate result from process. A good process can lead to a bad result through luck. A bad process can lead to a good result through luck. If you judge process only by result, you will learn the wrong lessons. Ferrari had a bad process in this race and a good result through luck. If they learn from the result, they learn wrong. If they learn from the process, they learn right.

I once witnessed a similar lesson in football. At the World Cup in Russia, I watched the match between Germany and South Korea. In the seventieth minute, I noticed Germany's defensive line averaged 68 metres high, pressing had failed 17 times, and South Korea had 12 counter-attacks. I posted that if Germany did not drop their block, the goal would come from an aerial situation. In the 90+3rd minute, Kim Young-gwon scored exactly as predicted. Thousands of accounts mocked me for "turning emotion into arithmetic," but Gazzetta dello Sport republished my analysis with a diagram of Germany's distorted trapezoid defence.

The lesson I drew from that experience is: a team can collapse even when previous results look fine. Germany had won many matches before, but the signs of decline had been smouldering for a long time. And when the collapse came, it came exactly as logic had predicted. This was true of Germany that year, and it is also true of Ferrari in this race. P3/P4 is not a sign of a team heading in the right direction; it is a curtain covering a structural problem.

Mercedes is stronger than the results sheet shows

There is another aspect of this race that I consider important but little noticed: Mercedes' true pace.

Leclerc said something very notable: "Kimi and Max were just too strong for us today and we were right after and we finished P3, P4." When a Ferrari driver admits that a Mercedes driver — Kimi Antonelli — was "too strong" for him, that is a signal worth analysing. It suggests the gap between Ferrari and Mercedes may be larger than the results sheet shows.

Remember that Russell retired with a power unit failure while in a strong position. Before retiring, he had shown strong pace. Had Russell finished, Mercedes might have had two cars ahead of Ferrari. This means Mercedes may, in reality, have been faster than Ferrari in this race, but the final result did not reflect it due to a technical failure.

This is a phenomenon I call "a gap hidden by a failure." When a fast team suffers a technical failure, their result is lower than their true pace. Conversely, when a slower team avoids failure, their result is higher than their true pace. In this race, Mercedes was the fast team that failed, while Ferrari was the slower team that did not. As a result, the results sheet inverted the true order of pace.

I want to be clear that this is not a criticism of Ferrari. It is an analysis of competitive reality. Ferrari did well to capitalise on the opportunity and score points. But if Ferrari reads P3/P4 as a sign that they are second in the power rankings, they may be fooling themselves. On the evidence of this race, Ferrari is "best of the rest" behind Red Bull and Mercedes, not a championship force.

This matters for how we read the story. If Mercedes is genuinely faster than Ferrari, then the pressure on Ferrari is not only to improve strategy but also to improve car performance. And if the strategy-process gap (Red Bull vs Ferrari) is a decisive factor independent of car performance, then Ferrari faces a dual challenge: closing the pace gap and closing the decision-quality gap. This is a hard problem, and it demands a systematic approach, not stopgap solutions.

Ferrari's structural risk

Now I want to place this race in a broader context, because a single event does not say much. What says much is the pattern that event belongs to.

Commentators have described Ferrari's strategy and related issues as a "long-running topic," with "times it hasn't" happened many times. This is an important phrase, because it indicates the error in this race is not an isolated phenomenon but an expression of a structural pattern. When a problem recurs across many races, many seasons, and many personnel, its cause lies not in a specific individual but in the system.

In risk analysis, I distinguish between two kinds of risk. The first is event risk: an isolated incident that can happen to any team. The second is systemic risk: a structural weakness capable of causing repeated incidents. Ferrari's case belongs to the second kind. Their structural weakness is decision-making ability under uncertainty, and this can hurt them at any race with mixed weather conditions.

What makes this risk more serious is that it occurs at a team regarded as "F1's biggest team." When a small team makes a strategy error, people may overlook it. But when Ferrari errs, it becomes a major media event, with high attention and great public pressure. This means every Ferrari strategy error harms not only points but also brand reputation. And brand-reputation damage can affect sponsor relationships, talent attraction, and team psychology.

I want to emphasise an aspect I consider important: public pressure can create a negative spiral. When a team is labelled "prone to strategy errors," every decision is scrutinised more closely, every mistake amplified more. This can make the team overly cautious, or conversely, reckless in trying to prove it can get it right. Both extremes are harmful. A good strategy group needs a balance between caution and decisiveness, and public pressure can break that balance.

An empty grandstand does not kill the race, but it takes away something the data cannot measure. In this case, what the grandstand takes away is not sound but patience. When a team faces constant public pressure, it has less room to experiment, to err, to learn. And in an environment where learning is a prerequisite for progress, the lack of room to err can become a real obstacle.

This brings me back to Leclerc's remark that "we'll speak whether to split the cars in those conditions is the best possible way." This is a statement about an internal review. It shows Ferrari is re-examining its process, and that is a positive sign. But it also shows that the process was not firmly enough established to handle high-uncertainty situations automatically. A mature process would have clear principles for splitting strategy, defined in advance and applied consistently. Having to "speak" after the event shows those principles either do not exist or are not strong enough.

Leclerc's maturity and the signal from within

There is an aspect of this story I find notable in a positive direction: how Leclerc handled the situation.

Leclerc said he "was aligned with the team." He said it was "a close call." He did not blame the strategy group, did not create an internal war, did not seek to distance himself from collective responsibility. This is a mature way of handling it, and it matters for team stability.

Across my years following F1, I have seen many drivers react to strategy errors in divisive ways. They publicly criticise the strategy group, they create pressure to change personnel, they put personal interest above collective interest. Such reactions can deliver short-term results, but they often harm the team in the long term, because they break the trust between driver and engineering team. Leclerc chose another path: he criticised the process publicly but constructively, while accepting collective responsibility.

This shows Leclerc is operating as an "accountability anchor" for the team, not as an outside critic. He is putting pressure on the system to improve, but in a way that does not break the system. This is a difficult balance, and it demands maturity in both expertise and character.

However, I also want to read this signal in another way. A team's lead driver having to publicly ask the team to learn from another team suggests internal pressure is rising. In a healthy team, such issues are usually resolved in internal meetings, not in the media. Leclerc speaking publicly may be a sign that he feels the need to create external pressure to drive internal change. This is a sign Ferrari's leadership should heed.

I want to add another story from my experience to illustrate this point. In my career, I once served as an editor for an award in the automotive industry in 2026. In that role, I had the chance to observe how organisations handle internal problems. What I learned is: organisations that solve problems openly and transparently tend to progress faster than those that hide problems to protect their image. Transparency, painful in the short term, is a prerequisite for long-term improvement. Leclerc speaking publicly about Ferrari's strategy problem, in that sense, may be a positive sign, provided the team can turn words into action.

Data only tells part of the story; the rest lies in whether people know how to listen. Sometimes the most important thing a team needs to hear is not telemetry data but what its driver is saying. Leclerc is speaking very clearly. The question is whether Ferrari is listening.

Red Bull and the lesson of institutional capability

I want to devote a section to Red Bull, because this story is not only about Ferrari. It is also about how a team builds a sustainable competitive advantage.

Red Bull took pole and the win in this race with Verstappen, and they got it right with both cars by choosing intermediates. But more notable is their consistency over time. Their "getting it right most of the time" is not luck. It is the result of a system.

In organisation theory, there is a concept called "institutional capability" — an organisation's ability to perform a specific function consistently, regardless of who performs it. When a team has institutional capability in strategy, it does not depend on a specific individual. Even when personnel change, decision quality is maintained. This is what championship teams need to build, and it is what Ferrari is trying to learn.

Mentioning Hannah Schmitz, Red Bull's chief strategist, is one way of showing that institutional capability can be embodied in people. An excellent individual can build a process, train a group, and set a standard for the whole organisation. This means attracting and retaining strategic talent is an important competitive factor. In an era where teams are budget-capped, optimising human resources becomes a more important advantage than ever.

This has implications for Ferrari. If they want to close the process gap with Red Bull, they need not only better tools and data but also a better decision-making culture. This is an organisational challenge, not just a technical one. And organisational challenges are often harder to solve than technical ones, because they involve people, culture, and power.

I have seen many teams across many sports try to change their culture. Some succeed, many fail. Those that succeed often share one thing: they start by honestly admitting the problem, without defensiveness. Leclerc has done the admitting. The question is whether the rest of Ferrari is ready to follow.

What to verify at the next race

Now I want to offer some points I will track at the next race, because analysis without prediction is merely description.

The first point I will track is how Ferrari handles mixed-weather situations in future. If they adopt a clearer split policy, that will be a sign they have learned from this race. If they continue to bet everything on one choice in high-uncertainty conditions, that will be a sign the structural problem remains unresolved.

The second point I will track is Ferrari's true pace versus Mercedes. If Mercedes continues to show strong pace when avoiding failures, then Ferrari's P3/P4 will be proven to have been flattering. If Ferrari narrows the pace gap, the pressure on the strategy process will ease somewhat.

The third point I will track is Ferrari's internal developments. Will the "speak" Leclerc mentioned lead to concrete changes in the decision-making process? Will new personnel be added to the strategy group? Will a new policy be issued? These are questions whose answers will show whether Ferrari is genuinely learning or merely paying lip service.

I want to end this piece with a forward-looking thought, not a summary. In more than forty years observing the sports industry, I have learned that the difference between champion and runner-up rarely lies in a single flash of brilliance. It lies in thousands of small decisions, made consistently, under pressure, across many seasons. Ferrari has the resources, the drivers, the history. What they need to build is a decision-making process solid enough to convert those resources into results. And if they truly learn from Red Bull, the next race in mixed weather will be the first test.

Every tracking number needs to go on the operating table, not the altar. And so does every strategy decision. Ferrari put a number on the altar in this race. Whether they bring it down to the operating table before the next race — that is what I will be watching.