Red Mist: Ferrari, How the Hell Can We Believe You?

Delighted, they signed for it, tore open the parcel and ripped the latest issue of Penthouse out. Three laps later, they reached the centrefold...

That is about the only way any logical man can justify what happened just after.

What went down again ten or fifteen minutes later, also remains mysterious. Despite promising he was pacifying his driver, that schoolmaster’s finger in the air and Charles’ poise like a school kid in big big trouble, looked nothing like placation.

Whatever really happened in those two situations, we will likely never know. But either way, the upturn, even if delightful in Carlos’ first win, may well come back to haunt our Scuderia.

Getting back to lap 39. “Why did we decide to stop Carlos?” Ferrari capo Mattia Binotto, responded to that question. “Because Charles had track position, he was leading, so he would have remained the leader of the race. Because his tyres were fresher compared to the ones of Carlos. He had I think six or seven laps less laps to the one of Carlos in a better shape.

"And Carlos, by stopping and being second, he would have protected at least in the first couple of corners where we knew that starting on the hard, it would have been a bit more difficult. That was the reason why we decided.

"Then we were hoping for more tyre degradation on the softs, to give Charles, yeah, maybe a difficult three or four laps initially but then recovering later on, but the soft didn’t degrade as we were hoping."

Really, Matt? You left Leclerc out on half-race old Whites to fend off a tribe of equally, or as even you put it, one more competitive car on fresh red, with what, ten laps to run? How, exactly were those Reds going to go off enough to put Charles back at an advantage? The pundits say double the laps left, once that Aston Martin SUV had peeled back into the pits.

Binotto goes on to defend not double stacking his cars. “We had the two cars and we thought there was not a sufficient gap to stop both of them because the second would have lost time at the pit stop and would have fallen back on track.”

How far back, exactly, when you knew it was a safety car restart? So, had Charles pitted right away and Lewis not, he’d do precisely to Lewis, what Lewis ultimately did to him.

Perez had to stop, his rubber was stuffed anyway and the safety car his godsend. And of course, it was perfectly logical to double stack in Monaco, was it not? Nope, I'll stick to my DHL runner story. And his parcel. Ferrari was sleeping on the pit wall. Again.

Moving on. “When I met Charles (after the race), I knew he was disappointed,” Buckets explained of his finger wagging admonishment of Leclerc. “But what I told him is he did a fantastic race once again, because he did a fantastic first lap of the race battling.

“And then after the restart behind the safety car again, the way he was driving and protecting his position is amazing and outstanding.

“So, I told him simply to stay calm because the way he drove was fantastic.”

How the hell can we believe you? There’s an old adage, Matt, that says you can bullshit some of the people some of the time. Fill in the dots mate, but that clearly was no talking up. It was a stern warning talking down to a guy who had just been screwed by his team. Again. And again. And again.

Buckets, your problem is definitely not behind the wheel. It’s on pit wall. There will come a time later in the season, when the form Ferrari is showing on track, could very well mean that the Leclerc points squandered on track at Silverstone, are the difference between another runner up and Ferrari’s first F1 World Driver’s Title in fifteen years.

Maybe by then, you will realise where your problem really lies. And yes, it will be too late. And yes, it’s actually been that long…

Quickly in closing, with reference to the race win and last week’s Red Mist, good on ya Chilli! The way things are going you could surprise us all this year.