How should Ferrari manage Vettel and Leclerc?
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There’s no ignoring the escalating tension between Ferrari’s two drivers at the moment. At Monza Leclerc was accused of not following instructions in qualifying, at Singapore the team’s strategy cost Leclerc a win and handed it to Vettel, and in Russia Vettel refused to go along with the team’s pre-plan plan for managing the start.
Is this situation salvage-able? Can Ferrari cool the situation, or do they need to seriously think about replacing one of their drivers before 2020?
How would you handle it?
Let them race.
The WCC is lost. The WDC standings are down to individual drivers, not the team.
Let them race, let them have at it, and use the rest of the season to work it out of their system.
Over the winter break, sit them down and tell them they need to work as a team to beat Mercedes, and that their driver pairing is better than Mercedes’, but only if they work as a unit.
Binotto must anyway have a driver in mind to replace Vettel when he retires, or if his contract is not renewed. Be ready to play the nuclear option of firing a driver who doesn’t toe the line in 2020 and promoting that hopeful. Hopefully Leclerc will realize time is on his side and won’t do anything silly, because if he’s the one who doesn’t toe the red line, it’s going to hurt Ferrari as much.
Am I hallucinating… or does the forum actually have an edit button? :)
Edit: Yes it does. Yes it does, indeed.
It’s crazy to think how things have reversed where Ferrari is now the team with equal status drivers, and Mercedes with a clear no.1 and where the no. 2 is just there for support, ‘Ferrari-style’.
For me it seems Leclerc being so fast is pushing both the team and Vettel, and relegating either to a no. 2 status will obviously cause havoc.
But the team should be careful with their rulebook, and just say follow orders no matter what. Having f.i. the fastest qualifyer and starter have the race, would be wrong if he’s holding up the other one.
Of course Ferrari is sure to mess both policy and race strategy up anyway.
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