Leclerc urges Ferrari to learn from Red Bull after Sepang tyre gamble backfires

The soft-tyre gamble cost Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton heavily at the start of the Grand Prix at Sepang. Starting fourth and second respectively, the Ferrari drivers fell to the back of the field and 15th place. Leclerc pitted at the end of the opening lap, which was run on a damp track. In the wake of the setback, the Monegasque urged Ferrari to learn from Red Bull and improve its race strategy.

Leclerc and team-mate Hamilton had started the changeable-weather race on soft tyres, while Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and Isack Hadjar chose intermediates. Ferrari was one of six teams to begin on slicks. It and Alpine were the only teams not to split their strategy between their two cars; Pierre Gasly and Franco Colapinto were also on softs.

Leclerc said he had supported the team’s call: “I was aligned with the team.” He acknowledged that it had been a close decision and said Ferrari would discuss whether splitting its drivers’ strategies was the best approach in such conditions. In his view, that choice inevitably leaves one car with a very good call and the other with a very poor one, with no guarantee that both outcomes will land somewhere in between.

The driver described a decision based on intuition and the track’s appearance, which looked fairly dry. But there was more water in the asphalt’s depressions than many had expected, he said, making the soft tyres the wrong choice. “It was very difficult, and it was the same for everybody,” he added, noting that Ferrari’s data came from conditions unlike those in the race.

Red Bull, with chief strategist Hannah Schmitz leading its operations, showed sharp execution. At Sepang, Verstappen claimed his 72nd Grand Prix victory after starting from pole. “There’s one team in particular, Red Bull, that gets it right most of the time with both cars. We need to understand what they are doing better than we do,” Leclerc said.

Hamilton and Leclerc eventually finished third and fourth. Their recovery was also aided by George Russell’s retirement, caused by a power-unit failure on his Mercedes with five laps remaining. Leclerc felt the final result was broadly representative of what Ferrari could have hoped for: Kimi Antonelli and Max were too strong, he said, with Ferrari just behind. He summed up a race in which a troubled opening was followed by a better second half: “The two extremes balanced each other out and we are finishing where we should have finished.”