Heartbreaking: Ferrari Once Again Makes Two Men Lose Their Joie De Vivre

Ferrari had a great weekend at the Hungarian Grand Prix, so long as you ignore the bad parts. After an upgrade package, the team has been on the rise. They are currently second in the Constructors’ Championship, and that’s factoring in their double disqualification in China earlier this year. During Saturday’s qualifying session, Charles Leclerc even managed to steal pole position away from the McLarens (and, somehow, Aston Martins) by a margin of .026 seconds. “Today I don’t understand anything in Formula 1,” Leclerc said, expressing his surprise by the pole during an “extremely difficult” qualifying.

As long as you stop there, the sentiment is optimistic rather than ominous. And if you memory hole every other moment of the weekend, you will forget Lewis Hamilton’s Q2 exit—material evidence of Ferrari’s “extremely difficult” qualifying—and his shockingly despondent media comments after the fact. Every all-time great is bound to have some decline in form, but even factoring in the margins from his teammate this year, Hamilton’s comments felt extreme. “I’m useless, absolutely useless,” Hamilton said. Prompted to expound, Hamilton added, “The team, they have no problem. You’ve seen the car is on pole. So, they probably need to change driver.”

You will also forget that, despite Hamilton’s words, the team, in fact, did have a problem once Sunday rolled around. You can make an exception for the 40 laps that Leclerc comfortably led the race, but coming out of his second pit stop, his car’s performance redefined the extremes of “dropping off a cliff.” Hungary has historically been referred to as “Monaco without the walls,” though recently it has provided its fair share of drama. This year, it chose to make a stunning return to expectation, with Alonso at one point maintaining a 14-car DRS train behind himself. But Leclerc was losing seconds on pace. Even difficult passing conditions were unable to make up for the sudden pace disparity caused by whatever happened during his pit stop.

“This is so incredibly frustrating. We’ve lost all competitiveness. You just have to listen to me, I would have found a different way of managing those issues,” Leclerc said over team radio. “Now it’s just undriveable. Undriveable. It’s a miracle if we finish on the podium.”

It would be a shame to forget one of the longest radio messages you’ll hear in F1, but not so bad to forget that Leclerc, in fact, was not able to cling onto a podium spot. As a reward for his desperate attempts to defend his podium position from George Russell, Leclerc picked up an additional five-second penalty for moving under braking. Leclerc was temperate about the penalty post-race, putting aside a light dig at Russell. “I can imagine George being quite vocal on the radio,” Leclerc said. “It’s normally the case.”

After all, the man had bigger things to worry about than a penalty that didn’t cost him any places. With the benefit of pit wall data, Leclerc ascribed his drop in pace to an unspecified chassis issue, rather than the specifics of the pit stop. It is unclear whether the chassis issue was the same as the vague “issues” mentioned in Leclerc’s radio messages, but there was no further elaboration coming from the Ferrari front.

Russell, however, had no issues laying out the opinions of the Mercedes garage. His speculation was that Ferrari were very close to running into the same issue that got their car disqualified in China: excessive plank wear caused by the car running too close to the ground. In theory, Ferrari’s rear suspension upgrade would have helped alleviate these issues, but in practice, the team still had to actively work around the issues with their current set-up, especially without safety cars and rain to reduce plank wear issues.

From the Mercedes garage’s perspective, Ferrari had given Leclerc tires with harder tire pressure and used an engine mode restricting speed at the end of the straight, both of which help limit plank wear. Something that doesn’t require speculation is that Hamilton was already given a “lift-and-coast reminder for the brakes” over the radio as early as lap three. Lifting and coasting, or easing off the accelerator before the braking point, is often used to save fuel and moderate the car’s temperature; it has also, with the recent regulations, been used in high-downforce circuits like the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps to limit excessive plank wear. Hamilton was prompted again, on lap eight, to lift and coast, to which Hamilton replied, “I’m already lifting and coasting a huge amount.” Undriveable? Sure sounds a bit undriveable.

Now the sport is heading into its summer break. If Ferrari manages to iron out their issues, and if the team manages a second-half comeback like they had last year, and if Hamilton manages to find some form after a mental reset, their abysmal Hungarian GP will be easy to forget. After all, just last week, with the benefit of rain, Sir Lewis Hamilton salvaged a disastrous weekend and proved that he still has it, only for all of that to be forgotten as soon as the next disaster rolled around.

Prior to the race weekend, Lando Norris responded to a question about his championship battle with Piastri with optimistic nihilism. “In 200 years no one is going to care. We’ll all be dead,” Norris said. Pair that with Leclerc’s post-qualifying statement—”Today I don’t understand anything about Formula 1″—and maybe that’s the proper, healthy attitude to have. Let everyone, Ferrari fans and drivers especially, be blessed with forgetfulness and an inability to comprehend the sport.