Charles Leclerc has a mountain to climb in the second half of the season, should he wish to become the 2022 Formula 1 World Champion.
The Monegasque driver is currently 80 points behind championship leader Max Verstappen, who is in complete control of the crown.
It’s been a first half of the season of missed opportunities for Leclerc, who has lost the race lead six times this season through either strategic errors, reliability problems, or driver error.
Leclerc most recently went from P1 to P6 at the Hungarian Grand Prix, where Ferrari decided to fit Leclerc with the Hard compound tyre, despite Pirelli advising all the teams not to use the compound.
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The Hungaroring was particularly cool during the race, due to the surface having been soaked not long before it began.
On the Hard tyres, Leclerc slid all over the circuit due to no grip; therefore, Ferrari decided to pit Leclerc once again for Soft tyres.
However, this dropped the Monegasque to sixth, leaving Verstappen to claim his eighth victory of the season.
After the race, Leclerc labelled Ferrari’s strategy call as not “the right decision”, with the Monegasque becoming increasingly frustrated with his team.
Ferrari also made strategic errors at the Monaco Grand Prix and the British Grand Prix, where Leclerc lost the race victory.
The 24-year-old retired from the French Grand Prix whilst leading; however, this occasion was due to driver error, after the Ferrari driver span off the circuit.
He suffered DNFs whilst leading the Azerbaijan and Spanish Grand Prix’s, with an engine failure the reason for both.
The gap between Verstappen and Leclerc really shouldn’t be as large as it is; however, it’s due to Ferrari’s own errors that it has grown to such a margin.
There have been calls for team principal Mattia Binotto to leave his role, but Binotto thinks otherwise.
The Ferrari boss doesn’t think the team “should change”, with the Italian failing to point out how poor Ferrari have been strategically so far in 2022.
“If I look again at the balance of the first half of the season, there is no reason why we should change,” he told Motorsport.com.
“First of all, I believe there is always a way to improve, you cannot be perfect and you never will be.
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“I have no doubts about the need to always make progress, we need to improve on aerodynamics, on the chassis, on the power unit, on the strategy and all the aspects that can be improved.
“That said, I think I have a great team dealing with strategy and I don’t think that’s our weakness. Races like Monaco, Silverstone or Paul Ricard were judged to be problematic on this front, but I don’t see the group as a problem, because I believe we have also made the right decisions.
“Silverstone and Paul Ricard: from my point of view I think they were difficult decisions, perhaps unfortunate, but not always wrong. So I don’t think it’s our weakness right now.”