There’s an old joke about two lawyers who come across a grizzly bear in the woods.
The first lawyer freezes in fear, while the second pulls out a pair of trainers from their rucksack.
The first turns to the second in disbelief, ‘What are you doing, you can’t outrun a bear?’
‘I know,’ the second replies, ‘I just have to outrun you.’
Now what on earth, Matt, I hear you ask, has this got to do with Ferrari? A valid question, but the joke does have some grounding for the current lay of the land in Maranello.
Lewis Hamilton is top dog at Ferrari, for now
Lewis Hamilton is top dog at Ferrari right now, there is no doubt about that. He rolled back the years at the Barcelona Grand Prix and seems to have finally found his rhythm in red.
Whether Mercedes manage to get their act together is still to be decided, but Charles Leclerc has let points slip through his fingers in recent race weekends. Granted not all of those instances are entirely his fault.
But, much like the second lawyer, Leclerc doesn’t necessarily need to outlast Mercedes’ title charge, but just that of Hamilton.
On the latest episode of the Up To Speed podcast, Hamilton and Leclerc’s role as Ferrari team-mates became a hot topic. More specifically, the debate about how long Hamilton will be around in the sport and what Leclerc needs to do to get through it.
Asked how he thought Leclerc would be feeling after Hamilton’s victory in Barcelona, David Coulthard said: “Well, I think that he’s mature enough in his career now to understand that racing against a seven-time world champion, you’re certainly not going to beat him all the time.
“He probably found it a bit easier than he expected when he joined from Mercedes and he basically was still the pace setter within the team. But what we’ve seen this year, think back to Shanghai where they were pass, repass, battling.
“We were questioning are Ferrari doing the right thing letting their guys race, but actually it was brilliant entertainment for us and it was the early signs that Lewis Hamilton was back to his his brilliant best.
“So he will of course be disappointed in his own performance in the last couple of grands prix, but he’s got a multi-million pound secure contract going forward even if worse comes to the worst for him in that Lewis continually delivers, gets the wins, wins the championship, Lewis can surely only be around for another two years, three years?
“I can’t imagine he’s going to be around for the next five years, which I imagine is the length of the contract that Charles Leclerc has.”
Podcast co-host and former driver Naomi Schiff then weighed in, adding: “Yeah and as you say, Charles has just signed that extension with Ferrari, and I think that that in itself will appease him a little bit, but I think that Charles is very, very hard on himself.
“He’s never been shy of criticising himself when he makes mistakes, and he does make quite a few mistakes, and we’ve seen him quite regularly crashing and qualifying, and he’s often over the limit, and that’s why he is such a quick driver because he goes to the limit and then sometimes beyond it.
“But it’s always for the betterment of the team when you have two very competitive drivers. And whilst it will definitely be frustrating for Charles, 100 per cent, Charles wasn’t the last person to win a race for Ferrari, that was Carlos, so he would have wanted to be the next one and not have it be Lewis.
“And I think the same thing goes for when Lewis scored his first podium with Ferrari. I think it had been a very long time since Charles had done the same. So those moments when you are competing against the person who’s in the same team with you before you compete with anybody else are extremely frustrating and I’m sure that he will be reflecting on how he can close that gap.
Leclerc problem is NOT a lack of speed
“But I think Charles was very, very quick in Barcelona before he put it in the wall and I think in Monaco it was exactly the same. I mean he was looking like the favourite for pole position. So, it’s not because of a lack of speed. It’s just tying in the loose ends, but in terms of the energy within the team, I don’t think that he’s going to be forgotten so quickly and that the tide’s going to change to Lewis. I don’t think that that happens that quickly.
“But it’s definitely very frustrating to see your team-mate on the top step of the podium when that could have been you.”
Hamilton (115) is second in the drivers’ standings, ahead of Leclerc (75) down in fourth. Ferrari (190) sit second in the constructors’ table behind Mercedes (262) in first.
The action resumes at the Austrian Grand Prix this weekend.
