MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA - MARCH 15: Charles Leclerc of Monaco driving the (16) Scuderia Ferrari SF90 on track during practice for the F1 Grand Prix of Australia at Melbourne Grand Prix Circuit on March 15, 2019 in Melbourne, Australia. (Photo by Charles Coates/Getty Images) Scuderia Ferrari’s decision-making in the 2019 Formula 1 season opener, the Australian Grand Prix, regarding their two drivers, Charles Leclerc and Sebastian Vettel, was beyond ridiculous. In recent Formula 1 seasons, Scuderia Ferrari have made several questionable decisions as far as race strategy is concerned, and quite a few of these decisions have been made with the intent of helping Sebastian Vettel as opposed to Kimi Raikkonen. But before the 2018 season ended, Ferrari confirmed that they would be replacing Raikkonen with rising star Charles Leclerc for the 2019 season. In the 21-year-old Monegasque’s first race as Raikkonen’s replacement at the Maranello-based team, the Australian Grand Prix, to open up the 2019 season, which was also the first race as Ferrari team principal for Mattia Binotto, the team’s decision-making still ended up being beyond ridiculous, once again, with the intent of helping Vettel. In fact, a portion of this poor decision-making didn’t even help Vettel; it simply hurt Leclerc. Leclerc went off the track early in the race, but he only lost a few seconds as a result of it; he did not lose fifth place, which is the position in which he started the race. After falling several seconds behind Vettel in fourth, he began to reel him in as the laps wound down. It was clear that the 21-year-old Monegasque had what it took to pass the 31-year-old German for fourth place after reeling him in lap after lap and sometimes recording lap times that were more than one second quicker than Vettel’s laps. But Ferrari told him to hold his position and to increase his gap to his teammate. Here is an audio clip of this discussion. Before the season began, the team stated that Leclerc and Vettel would be free to fight. Yet in the season’s first race, they issued team orders to keep a much faster Leclerc behind Vettel. Given a recent rule change, this decision would have made sense had Ferrari taken advantage of this rule change. With the driver who records the fastest lap in a race earning one bonus point, the Prancing Horse could have told Leclerc to pit for new tires in an attempt to have him record the race’s fastest lap as the race neared its conclusion. With Rich Energy Haas’ Kevin Magnussen running roughly 30 seconds behind Leclerc in sixth place, Leclerc would have had more than enough time to make a pit stop and still come out in fifth with the fastest and freshest tires of anybody in the field, giving him a great chance to earn 11 points for a fifth place finish as opposed to the standard 10. After all, he was already much faster than Vettel to begin with. For Ferrari, they would have essentially been risking nothing for the potential to gain one point. Leclerc was bound to finish in fifth place either way given the fact that he was not allowed to pass Vettel. But instead, Leclerc was simply told to stay behind a much slower Vettel; nothing else. Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport’s Valtteri Bottas, who won the race, ended up earning this point, so had Leclerc earned it, it would have created a two-point swing in favor of Ferrari over their chief constructor championship rivals. Mercedes currently have a 22-point lead (44 to 22) over Ferrari in second place in the constructor standings. Had Leclerc finished in fifth and recorded the race’s fastest lap, Mercedes’ lead over Ferrari would be 20 points (43 to 23). Yet in addition to not allowing their clearly faster driver to pass their clearly slower driver, they were not willing to risk next to nothing for a great chance to essentially earn another two points in the constructor standings and for Leclerc to earn another one point in the driver standings. Want your voice heard? Join the Beyond The Flag team! Write for us! With the Australian Grand Prix having been Mattia Binotto’s first race as Ferrari’s team principal, will the team’s decision-making change at any point throughout the remainder of the 2019 Formula 1 season? If so, how will it change, and who will these changes benefit? The next race on the 21-race 2019 schedule is the season’s second race, the Bahrain Grand Prix, and it is scheduled to take place at 11:05 a.m. ET on Sunday, March 31 at Bahrain International Circuit in Sakhir, Bahrain. It is set to be broadcast live on ESPN2, so be sure to tune in to it.<doc-sep>Ferrari insist their surprise poor performance at the Australian GP did not show the "real potential" of their 2019 F1 car. The Scuderia were most experts' tip to set the pace at the season-opener after an impressive winter of testing but their Melbourne weekend fell flat with their SF90 surprisingly not at home around Albert Park. Australian GP Race Report Ferrari: Why Leclerc was told to hold Ferrari's drivers finished only fourth and fifth in Sunday's race - a minute behind Mercedes race winner Valtteri Bottas. "It's not what we were expecting. Winter Testing was certainly different," admitted team boss Mattia Binotto. "Since Friday P1 we never found the right balance on the car and we struggled with the tyres. "We tried different set-up approaches during the weekend but we never concluded with the right balance. "The performance [in the race] is simply reflecting what we had in qualy as well." 0:45 Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel says the team haven't explained why the car suffered from a lack of pace in the season-opening Australian Grand Prix. Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel says the team haven't explained why the car suffered from a lack of pace in the season-opening Australian Grand Prix. Get Sky Sports F1 for 2019 Formula 1 in 2019: Full race schedule Ferrari remain calm - and expect to bounce back While investigations into the unexpected performance slump were already ongoing at the track and back at their Italian headquarters, Binotto said it was "too early to have a proper judgement". "Do we understand that yet? Probably not, so we need to analyse the data and try to asses what really happened," he added. But one thing was clear from Ferrari's lengthy post-race media debrief: the huge promise of pre-season has not suddenly evaporated. "One thing for certain is that this weekend is not the real potential of our car," said Binotto. "We are pretty sure that the potential is certainly bigger." Sebastian Vettel, who finished as their lead car in fourth, added: "I'm sure we will find something because we know the car is better than what we've seen. "We know we have a lot more potential to unleash." Ferrari will 'learn lessons' While clearly not the start to their championship challenge the Italian team had anticipated, Binotto believes that Melbourne represented "a good lesson learned". He predicted: "If we can identify what the issue was we can be back even stronger". Vettel added: "In Barcelona we were very happy with the car from day one. The balance was right, the car was responding to what I was asking it to do, and I had a lot of confidence. "All weekend I didn't get that confidence I had in Barcelona so I didn't have the car underneath to play around and it wasn't doing what I was asking. There were glimpses here and there that were really strong and our performance in some corners was really good. But in the majority of corners it wasn't and that's why we were slower than other people and lost out [in qualifying] as well as today." Sky Sports F1 is the home of live and exclusive F1 - and new and existing customers in the UK can now get the channel for just £10 extra a month, our best-ever offer. Find out more here to watch the 2019 season live<doc-sep>So much, then, for this being Ferrari’s red-letter day. At a race where they had been expected to reassert their traditional muscle, potentially breaking Mercedes’ stranglehold of the sport, their two cars were cut an astonishing 57 seconds adrift. In Formula One terms, that is an aeon, and not one that can be easily bridged. For Sebastian Vettel, the winner the previous two years in Melbourne but only fourth here, it was an alarming sign of the struggles to come. Just when he had dared to hope that Ferrari would furnish him with a car to vanquish his arch-nemesis Lewis Hamilton, he was left crestfallen and bewildered at the team’s crushing by Mercedes. “I was too slow, I just wanted to get to the end,” he said. “Everyone else looked to have far fewer problems than we did.” Charles Leclerc, on his Scuderia debut, did not much cover himself in glory either. At one point, the Monegasque driver veered on to the grass to lose ground to Max Verstappen, ultimately trailing home in fifth. He briefly flickered into life late on, coming within overtaking range of Vettel, but was told in no uncertain terms by Ferrari’s pit-wall brigade to back off. As a 21-year-old team-mate to a quadruple world champion, he has been told to play a supporting role.<doc-sep>
Ferrari entered the Australian Grand Prix as the preseason favourite but leaves Melbourne after a baffling loss of pace and an early decision to implement team orders on its drivers. After an aggressive pit strategy saw Sebastian Vettel lose out on third place to Red Bull's Max Verstappen in the final stint, Ferrari was forced to settle for a distant fourth and fifth. During the closing portion of the race a frustrated Vettel opened up his radio channel to ask the team: "Why are we so slow?" Although Mercedes' dominant pole position on Saturday had silenced the talk of Ferrari being the team to beat this year -- a narrative which formed over the preseason -- seeing neither red car on the podium was a genuine shock. When asked immediately after the race if the team had given him an answer to his question, he replied: "No. Like I said, we're just slow." Charles Leclerc was forced wide at Turn 1 by teammate Sebastian Vettel in Melbourne. Both Ferrari drivers lost the final spot on the podium to Red Bull's Max Verstappen. Mark Thompson/Getty Images Another situation unfolded in those closing laps, as Vettel's teammate Charles Leclerc -- who had been squeezed onto the grass by the German at Turn 1 -- closed in on him at a significant rate. It appeared as though Leclerc had more than enough pace to catch his teammate but his performance suddenly dropped off at the end. The reason for that loss of pace was revealed by the following radio exchange: Leclerc: "Should I stay behind Sebastian, yes or no?" Ferrari: "Yes, and back off to have some margin." Leclerc: "OK" Leclerc chuckled in the postrace TV pen when told the exchange had gone viral, saying, "I asked [to attack] but we had to keep positions." That decision follows team boss Mattia Binotto's confirmation ahead of the season that Vettel would get priority treatment in the early races. However, it opened up another question about the team's race strategy. It appeared as though Ferrari would have had enough of a margin to sixth placed Kevin Magnussen to attempt to pit one of its cars for fresh tyres in a bid to claim the point for fastest lap (a new rule for 2019), which several drivers were pushing for late on. However, despite telling Leclerc not to race his teammate, the team declined to bring him in for such a stoppage. That point eventually went to race winner Valtteri Bottas and Mercedes. When speaking to the media later, Binotto said the team decided to play it safe and decline the opportunity. "We had the window to pit Charles for new tyres and go for the fastest lap, but I think as I said, whenever you pit, it may be a risk, and I think it was more important for us to bring the car home and score the points," he said. "There are sometimes races where you are not the best, but it is still important to score points, and at the end, that was our choice. "We will eventually review the decision, but the decision was for that reason." Understanding the reasons for the loss of pace will be the priority for Ferrari ahead of Bahrain.