F1 | Spanish GP – Catalan nightmare, now Ferrari must overcome controversies and mistakes

Without grip, without feeling, without balance. On and off the track, a weekend that can open a chasm between what has been and what will be, which puts Ferrari face to face with its most ancestral fears, with the most immobilizing insecurity, with that uncertainty transformed at the wall into self-harm pure.

Not half of it is good. In a climate of suspicions and conspiracies, supported by a very cloying and redundant conspiracy social and very little demonstrable (the accusations should be followed by at least some clues, some evidence, otherwise they just become insults), Ferrari stumbles into a horrible, disastrous GP, victim and executioner of a suddenly adverse fate.

The feeling is that the Red team got a little too carried away by events, unable to stay completely focused on its task. She needed to have the strength and calm to think in the long term, without getting nervous, thus limiting the damage in a prohibitive race. It's a fact that the slightly reduced tread compounds didn't work on the SF71H. But it is also true, beyond any controversy, that Pirelli will only bring this type of tire on two other occasions.

In short, we are not faced with the upheavals of 2013, to cite an episode that left its mark, when the Italian supplier structurally modified the tires due to too many delaminations. We are not, therefore, faced with a reversal that can change the values ​​on the field. There is no reason to be a victim or to cry foul. At most there can be annoyance or disappointment, as indeed openly expressed by team principal Maurizio Arrivabene.

Yet, with a pretty good effort, Vettel had righted the situation in qualifying, qualifying third with the hardest tyres, and in the race he could easily have finished second, a position he deservedly conquered at the start and confirmed with a world-class maneuver after the first pit stops. Instead, Ferrari went ballistic in Barcelona and behaved in a diametrically opposite manner to Sakhir's courageous team, changing medium tires as soon as they were fitted, the only one among the top teams to opt for a two-stop strategy.

An improvident choice dictated by the fear of not finishing the race with those indigestible tyres, an excess of caution which ended up giving two positions to his rivals. World championship points (very heavy) thrown away, for no apparent reason, despite Vettel himself trying to justify the decision in post-race interviews.

Too intent on thinking about the tyres, the Cavallino made the wrong strategy on the wall for the third consecutive race, effectively surrendering to its rivals. To win a world championship you also need to know how to create luck and wasting poles, victories and podiums is the best way to ruin everything.

A world championship that seemed almost magical, with the victories in the first two rounds and the three poles scored consecutively, risks turning into yet another psychodrama from which it would then become difficult to escape. It's already difficult to understand the eighth and two fourth places in the last three races, not to mention the worrying reliability problems with Raikkonen's car.

The imperative for the Red is to forget the controversies over the tires and the speed of the Mercedes at Montmelò, to square up, close ranks and force ourselves to start again with coolness and determination, resetting the disappointments of the last GPs. Monte Carlo is a fundamental crossroads; the objective can only be to return to victory, to downsize a Mercedes that has all too suddenly returned to dominance and prove itself stronger by a few millimeters rubber.

Antonino Rendina

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