This is how the F1 World Championship is going: The fastest car isn’t dominating
Charles Leclerc took his third win of the season in Austria, which also took him to 259 laps as a leader, more than anyone else at this point midway through the Formula 1 season.
However, it’s not Leclerc who tops the rankings but Max Verstappen, who is 38 points ahead of his Ferrari counterpart.
The Dutchman has led for 253 laps, but he is more effective, because they have given him twice as many victories (six) as Leclerc.
This happens because Verstappen is finishing the races, while Ferrari have struggled this season. Although the F1-75 is the fastest car, it does not always convert its superiority into victories.
Nobody doubts that Ferrari is the fastest car. Leclerc has six pole positions, while Verstappen has three. In total, it’s seven for Ferrari and four for Red Bull if we add those of Carlos Sainz and Sergio Perez.
Despite Carlos and Charles having led 16 times and Max and Checo having led 12 times, Red Bull top the constructors rankings.
The RB18 is almost as fast, but much more reliable and complete, capable of getting the tyres into the optimum performance window in the first two or three laps. They are also fast, especially on circuits that wear the front axle more than the rear.
They suffered at the start, but they adjusted, corrected and slimmed down the car, which they seem not to have achieved with the Ferrari propulsion, to which countermeasures are being applied but continues to fail. It has cost Leclerc two victories while Sainz retired twice so far.
The right risk
That was a risk taken by Ferrari. With the engines frozen for several years, they opted for a strong engine in their bid to gain reliability over the months with the corrections allowed by the regulations for reliability and safety.
Better to be able to win than to live five years condemned to lapping at one second per lap. And of course, their drivers have been central characters since the beginning of the year and can still win the double crown. That is what Ferrari believe.
This power unit specification has a couple of races left, and soon the new one will arrive, hopefully at Spa or Monza in late August or September.
However, they are the first team with both their drivers already in the penalty bracket, as they will go beyond the fourth power unit in France, while the competition is on two.
Ferrari has maintained a neat respect for both drivers, going for the fastest in every race, while Red Bull has thrown its weight behind Verstappen from the outset.
And they will keep it that way until the maths make it inevitable, which is why Carlos Sainz has yet to have his final word. The Spaniard made a spectacular comeback after winning no points in two races at the beginning of the season.
He got the hang of the car with several podiums in a row, registering his first pole and victory.
Haas fending off champion Mercedes
The new cars and their aerodynamics have brought about a clear change in the league. Just watching stretches of races with four and five different cars fighting as they did at the end of the Silverstone race is extraordinary compared to where F1 was coming from until 2020.
The circuits are full again, with several exceeding 300.000 spectators over the weekend, while the sprint races are exciting and suddenly Haas is able to defend a position against the 2021 champion Mercedes and run comfortably seventh in the championship, score points with both cars and be in the races. Except for Williams, all the cars are competitive this season.
Downturns
Meanwhile, Mercedes have become, curiously, the most consistent of the second tier, with Lewis Hamilton being the only driver to finish every race and George Russell, until Silverstone, the guy who finished every race in the top five.
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Filling the points barn and hoping for a more favourable second half of the season, the two Mercedes drivers are the only ones to have scored points in 10 races, the ones who have done the most kilometres (7.820 for Hamilton and 7.791 for Russell), the ones who have reeled off the odd fastest lap and sipped champagne on the podium from what was left over from the Red Bull-Ferrari dominance.
Alonso
As for Fernando Alonso, the 41-year-old is determined to measure himself against the youngsters and to get the better of them on his way to breaking several longevity records. He is aiming for a fourth spot after the big three.
