“We can win with Lewis”: Why Leclerc abandoned his late gamble on soft tyres

18 comments on ““We can win with Lewis”: Why Leclerc abandoned his late gamble on soft tyres”

1. 

   S Arkazam
   19th May 2025, 16:45

   Bozzi No, everyone else can push now, so they’re going to recover time. So stay out.
   Leclerc I cannot push, so they cannot be behind.
   Bozzi Now, now you can. Now you can push, now you can push, push so you’re ahead of Albon.

   How can they ‘push’ when under SC (but not caught up yet)?
   1. 

      Ideals (@ideals)
      19th May 2025, 16:50

      Because you only need to be cautious at the site of the incident and can then catch up to the safety car. There is no delta time you need to obey like under VSC for obvious reasons.
      1. 

         S Arkazam
         19th May 2025, 19:05

         I doubt you are right, but happy to be proven wrong.
         Because if you can drive as fast as you wish outside the yellow zone (until you reach the SC) then there would be no pit stop advantage under SC.
         1. 

            OOliver
            20th May 2025, 3:39

            How do cars almost a lap down eventually catch up with the cars ahead when the safety car is deployed. Obviously they are not moving at the same speed of the safety car and neither is the safety car slowing down to a crawl.
            There have been several incidents in the past when the safety car holds back some of the trailing pack giving the lead driver plenty of time to pit and retain the lead which will not be possible if all cars were maintaining the same speeds
            1. 

               S Arkazam
               20th May 2025, 7:37

               I wrote “until you reach the SC”.
         2. 

            TurboBT
            20th May 2025, 10:57

            There will be if you arrive before all cars line up behind SC.
      2. 

         MichaelN
         19th May 2025, 19:42

         That’s not the case.

         There are two limits on pace, first, the requirement to ‘reduce speed and form up in line behind the safety car no more than ten car lengths apart.’

         Second, before that line is formed, from the moment the SC is deployed, ‘until the time that each car crosses the first safety car line for the second time, drivers must stay above the minimum time set by the FIA ECU at least once in each marshalling sector and at both the first and second safety car lines’. (Article 55.7)
2. 

   stefano (@alfa145)
   19th May 2025, 21:01

   saying “there’s **seventeen** laps” to go, like they are all supposed to be at racing speed with the softs, when: the safety car has just been announced, it will take its time to be deployed, the standing car must be removed by a crane that is yet to show up, the group has to form behind the safety car, the lapped cars have to unlap themselves, the race director has to be satisfied by the distance between the leader and the unlapped cars, all this happening before going racing again is, simply put, asinine.
   1. 

      anon
      19th May 2025, 22:06

      @alfa145 I guess that, even if it would have involved several laps at safety car speed, the team were still worried that the overall stint length would still be asking too much of those tyres.

      When all of the other drivers in a similar situation to Leclerc were given the option, it’s notable that none of them wanted to use the softs either – a heavily worn set of hard or medium tyres was still seen as less of a gamble than using the soft tyres. Piastri, Gasly, Lawson, Hulkenberg, Russell, Tsunoda and Sainz all chose to stick with their existing tyres, even though most of them had tyres that were as old as Leclerc’s tyres were, whilst Stroll and Alonso preferred their used mediums instead of softs.

      You might argue that Ferrari were being overly cautious there, but we also saw that, when faced with a similar choice, nearly half the field did the same thing as Ferrari did. If none of them thought the soft tyres were a viable option, it suggests that Ferrari probably did make the right overall call.
   2. 

      grat
      20th May 2025, 2:40

      The mediums weren’t as durable as expected– if you can’t get 19 laps out of a medium, you certainly won’t get 17 laps out of a soft.
   3. 

      Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
      20th May 2025, 9:02

      @alfa145 I don’t agree. Leclerc is just as aware of the delaying factors in a Safety Car restart as you and I are, it would be a waste of time for his engineer to point it out.

      In this case the sheer length of the Safety Car period took people by surprise but by the time it became clear it was going to be out so long Leclerc’s opportunity to pit had long passed.
3. 

   Alonso (@alonshow)
   20th May 2025, 6:47

   I don’t envy the jobs of race engineers. The patience these guys have with these bratty and spoiled pilots!
   1. 

      Biggsy
      20th May 2025, 7:59

      @alonshow
      Yeah, as much as Ferrari’s pitwall can lack at times, this one was stuffed by Leclerc, as much as his pitwall.
      He refused to pit when he was told to pit under SC, and his tires were worthless for the rest of the race.
4. 

   Bruno Alves
   20th May 2025, 12:20

   Leclerc knew his tyres were gone, even to the point of wondering if he would be able to make it to the end of the race, and he still pushed Albon off track when Albon had much more grip than him. Knowing that his teammate was right behind both of them and on new tyres i can only see it as a cynical move over Albon to allow Hamilton a chance at a podium. Really shameful behaviour, even more with the nonsensical complaints on the radio afterwards.
   1. 

      roadrunner (@roadrunner)
      20th May 2025, 19:04

      He’s kept Albon behind for 7 laps before on that very set of tires that was perfectly fine to go to the end which was the initial plan anyway. And just because you have better tires doesn’t mean you should be waved through. It was a pretty robust defensive move but attacking on the outside of a fast chicane is always risky. For me that should still be considered as hard racing.
      1. 

         Bruno Alves
         20th May 2025, 20:18

         Pushing anyone who tries to overtake you on the outside off the track it’s not hard racing, it’s impossible racing.
      2. 

         Ajaxn
         20th May 2025, 21:22

         Albon panicked when he saw Hamilton approaching. He could have found safer places to use his DRS advantage, but he chose instead to use his tire advantage to brute-force it round the outside. I blame Albon for his misfortune. This isn’t the first time he’s done that.
         1. 

            Bruno Alves
            21st May 2025, 14:00

            If the driver ahead is blocking the inside you can only go for the outside.
            And Albon was comfortably inside DRS range with Leclerc, so there was no reason to be worried about Hamilton behind, actually Albon was aiming for a podium, knowing that Piastri also had very old tyres.

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