A series of strategy errors saw Ferrari essentially gift Sunday’s Monaco Grand Prix to their championship rivals Red Bull.
Heavy rain meant that the start of the race was delayed for over an hour, with organisers deeming that conditions were too unsafe on the narrow streets of Monte Carlo. But when the race did get underway, Ferrari seemed to have everything in hand, after locking out the front row, with Charles Leclerc starting in pole ahead of his team-mate Carlos Sainz.
They got away well and seemed to have things under control, but then they made mistakes. When Red Bull pitted Sergio Pérez and put him on intermediate tyres, the Mexican lap-times began to tumble. Ferrari decided to respond when there was no need, on a circuit where it is virtually impossible to overtake.
The Italian team brought in Leclerc two laps later, but when he emerged from the pits he was behind Pérez. That left Sainz in the lead, but he had his own misfortune. His own exit from the pit was baulked by the Williams of Nicholas Latifi, giving Pérez the chance to leapfrog him when he stopped for tyres again, which he duly did.
Meanwhile, Ferrari compounded their problems with another blunder, calling both drivers in for slick tyres, only to change their mind and telling Leclerc to stay out.
However, the Monegasque driver was already in pit line by then, and it was too late. Max Verstappen, his main rival in the drivers’ title race, got the chance to move ahead of him, and Leclerc was relegated to fourth.
The race was red-flagged for 45 minutes after Mick Schumacher’s Haas crashed into a barrier, but, when it did restart, Pérez led them out, followed by Sainz, then Verstappen and Leclerc. They were nose-to-tail virtually to the chequered flag, but there was no change to the order.
Pérez won the Grand Prix and both Ferrari and Leclerc lost ground to championship rivals. There will no be a huge inquest at Ferrari at what went wrong, because such mistakes may eventually prove very costly when it comes to the end of the season.