Ferrari got it wrong in Singapore. But its F1 gamble has worked before...

September 25th 2024

Ferrari was 'scratching' in Singapore as it gambled on a late qualifying run to beat the faster McLarens. But while it ended disastrously, there was nothing wrong with its approach, writes Mark Hughes — as Mercedes showed in 2019

Leclerc was aiming for a second successive pole... but ended Q3 session without a recorded time

Jayce Illman/Getty Images

Sometimes in a grand prix weekend it will become obvious to a team when it is competitive, but not quite the fastest. Quick enough that if everything goes in your favour and you really squeeze every last drop of performance from the car, you might set pole and you might thereafter have a chance of winning. But not fast enough that you can control your own destiny. There is another car inherently faster than you and if they nail it they’re going to beat you. But they might not nail it, so you are looking for every tiny opportunity to make the difference. You are what is commonly referred to as ‘scratching’.

Ferrari was scratching in Singapore last weekend. The underlying competitive order suggested Charles Leclerc was the nearest thing there was to competition for McLaren, but Lando Norris was flying, the McLaren giving him all the messages he needed with its beautiful balance, strong grip and great tyre usage.

But coming into Q3, it was all still to play for. As at all street tracks, the grip ramps up quickly at Singapore as more cars run on it. Getting out later than a rival car really can make a crucial difference, even if it does then leave you more vulnerable to a red flag. So even more than usual there was a game of cat and mouse about when to leave the garages for the Q3 laps. Ferrari was determined to get out after McLaren, Red Bull and Mercedes. But not so late that it risked running out of time to get the two new tyre runs in. More than that, because the Ferrari was a little prone to not having its front tyres up to temperature in time for the beginning of the lap, it wanted to remain in the garages, tyre blankets on, as the others lined up in the pitlane queue, their tyres cooling as they waited for the green light. So they choreographed a sequence whereby with the queue still forming, Leclerc’s car was lowered from its jacks, engine running, as if about to leave. But then waited for another minute, blankets on, only leaving the garage as the light went green. Carlos Sainz in the other Ferrari followed on.

Ferrari F1 car of Charles Leclerc in qualifying for the 2024 Singapore Grand Prix — Ferrari gambled on a last-gasp qualifying run in its bid to beat McLaren

Joe Portlock/Getty Images

“We were all playing a kind of game,” admitted team principal Federic Vasseur, “because no-one wanted to be first. We did a fake to release the car from the pitlane and everyone was trying to copy the other.”

There are some downsides of being last to join. You increase the chance of getting out behind a slower car and therefore you need to create a bigger gap ahead so that car is not interrupting your airflow by the end of the timed lap. The more you have to back off on the prep lap to create that gap, the cooler your tyres are going to be. Fernando Alonso, his Aston Martin on used tyres, was sent out right in Leclerc’s path. Thus making it even trickier to get the gap while simultaneously getting the front tyres up to temperature but not overheating the rears. Then there is the concertina effect of being last in the queue, as every car ahead of you is also trying to get a good gap to the car ahead. In this way, you run the risk of being given blue flags at the end of your out lap to get out of the way of cars completing their flying lap. And of course, you are more vulnerable to those red flags. But if everything goes perfectly and you are not compromised by any of these things – which is possible and does happen – then you will be running on a grippier track than the ostensibly faster car you are trying to beat. You are scratching.

McLaren had no need to be playing at the margins like this. They were super-fast and the odds favoured them being fastest even on a slightly less grippy track. Why introduce a gamble?

Leclerc had a lot of tyre-cooling waiting to do. Did that lose him all the tyre temperature he’d just gained by staying longer with the blankets on? These are the sorts of margins Ferrari was playing with. Despite the big gap he’d given Alonso, Leclerc was almost up with him by Turn 16 – and was obliged to back off again, late in the lap. He then had to wait a further few seconds so as not to impede the end of Nico Hülkenberg’s timed lap. As he begins the first Q3 lap he can feel the front tyres are not fully up to temperature, he has to back off a little on the exit and take Turn 2 cautiously. There’s probably more than 0.1sec of lost lap time immediately. But then there’s a red flag. Sainz has crashed, caught out by the same combination of low tyre temps and having to wait to avoid impeding (in this case Oscar Piastri). As Sainz went to get back on the gas through the final fast double-apex left-hander, the rear wheels spun up over a bump and threw the Ferrari backwards into the wall. So, neither Ferrari with a time on the board, Leclerc having it all to do on the next lap. That late pitlane leave had really bitten them so far.

Time was getting tight for the final runs once the session was restarted and Leclerc was the fifth car out – but again Alonso was released in his path. Again his out-lap was compromised. Leclerc’s default is always to attack. He had to assume his tyres were going to be ready as he approached Turn 1. They weren’t. He ran a compromised line out of there and ran beyond track limits at Turn 2 as a result. Time deleted. Ferrari P9 and P10 on the grid.

Carlos Sainz steps out of his crashed Ferrari F1 car in 2024 Singapore Grand Prix qualifying — Sainz steps out of his cold-tyred Ferrari after qualifying crash

Grand Prix Photo

With the benefit of hindsight, Ferrari got it wrong. But only because it was trying to transcend the actual level of its car around here.

Scratching like this doesn’t always go wrong. Sometimes it can put the slower car in control of the race. Let’s go back to Baku 2019. Ferrari was way faster than Mercedes around here. But Leclerc – by far the fastest throughout the weekend – had crashed out in Q2. That still left Sebastian Vettel in a car faster than the Mercedes. But only by a couple of tenths at best. Mercedes were scratching but for Q3 had a plan.

Here’s how we called it in the report at the time:

The plan at Mercedes had been hatched earlier that morning; because the tow on that final Caspian straight is so valuable here (anything between 0.3 and 0.6sec), they wished to avoid the usual final Q3 scenario of everyone waiting for Mercedes to go out first, which potentially could see Ferrari benefit from Merc’s tow. One of the Mercs would be towed by the other, but the lead one would try to pick up a tow from another team’s car, while trying not to give Ferrari a tow. But how to arrange that on the crucial final runs? The dummy. Valtteri Bottas and Lewis Hamilton left early, just like usual. Three cars responded – those of Lando Norris, Antonio Giovinazzi and Sebastian Vettel – to line up nose-to-tail behind the Mercs up the pitlane. But then Bottas and Hamilton moved hard left into the practice start lane… and stopped. “Were you guys doing dummy starts, or did you just stop?” asked Vettel afterwards, knowing full well the answer. “Mmm?” replied Hamilton in mock innocence. “We just dummied you basically.”

“Clutch calibration,” offered Bottas. “Yeah, definitely clutch calibration,” agreed Hamilton.

Bottas, benefitting from Norris’s tow, took pole. Hamilton, getting a tow from Bottas, lined up alongside him. Vettel, in the faster car but without the tow’s 0.3sec, was third, 0.1sec off the Mercs.

Lewis Hamilton talks to Valtteri Bottas after qualifying for the 2019 F1 Azerbaijan Grand Prix — Mercedes drivers after qualifying in Baku ’19: Hamilton chose the running order but was compromised by being behind Bottas

Charles Coates/Getty Images

So Merc had scratched itself onto the front row against a faster car on the day, the foundations of a 1-2 in the race, Bottas winning. But the Q3 manoeuvering had implications upon the order within Mercedes.

Bottas let Norris go, so as to get enough distance on the McLaren that he wouldn’t be disturbed by its wake in the early part of the lap but could get its tow at the end. Hamilton in turn had to let Bottas go, which dropped his tyres even further out the window. “I had moments at Turns 1 and 3 as a result,” he reported.

There was an intense bit of discussion between the Mercedes drivers in the collecting area, almost certainly about how Hamilton had been compromised on the tyre prep lap – but Bottas appeared to give him short shrift. It had been Hamilton’s turn this weekend to decide the running order between them and it was he who’d decided Bottas should run ahead (obviously with the intention of picking up Bottas’s tow). As it turned out, of course, that worked against Hamilton.

“We need to have a cleaner weekend,” said Vasseur after the last Sunday’s race, in which Leclerc came through to fifth, Sainz to seventh. For sure it was a weekend which could have gone better. But sometimes you can get it wrong for all the right reasons.