Formula 1: One race into 2019, Ferrari are in panic mode, and they should be

The 2019 Formula 1 season has only just begun, and Scuderia Ferrari are already in panic mode. What’s more alarming is the fact that this is justified.

Following preseason testing at Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya in Montmeló, Barcelona, Spain, Scuderia Ferrari appeared to be the favorites to win the 2019 Formula 1 constructor championship.

In addition, Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel appeared to the favorite to win the 2019 driver championship, and the team’s new driver, Charles Leclerc, appeared to be a dark horse to do so.

Ferrari have not won a constructor championship since the 2008 season when their drivers, Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen finished in second and third place, respectively, in the driver standings, and they have not won a driver championship since the 2007 season when Raikkonen won it.

But Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, the five-time reigning constructor champions that have fielded the last five driver champions, made this talk about Ferrari and Vettel being the favorites seem like ancient history, as they dominated the opening race weekend of the 2019 season from start to finish.

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Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton, a five-time Formula 1 champion who has won four of the last five driver championships, topped the speed charts in all three practice session for the season opener, the Australian Grand Prix, and he took the pole position for the race.

In fact, the 34-year-old Briton took the pole position for this 58-lap race around the 16-turn, 3.296-mile (5.304-kilometer) Melbourne Grand Prix Circuit road course in Albert Park, Melbourne, Australia, by recording a track record lap time of 80.486 seconds (147.424 miles per hour).

Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas took the lead from Hamilton at the start of the race, and he only relinquished it once to Aston Martin Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen as a result of the fact that he made his pit stop two laps before the 21-year-old Dutchman did.

Bottas went on to win the race after leading 56 of its 58 laps, and he won it by 20.886 seconds over Hamilton in second place, marking the largest margin of victory since Mercedes’ Nico Rosberg finished 25.022 seconds ahead of Hamilton in the 2016 Russian Grand Prix.

In Red Bull Racing’s first ever race as a Honda-powered team, Verstappen finished the race in third place just 1.634 seconds behind Hamilton. Meanwhile, Vettel and Leclerc finished 34.589 seconds and 35.710 seconds, respectively, behind Verstappen and 57.109 seconds and 58.230 seconds, respectively, behind Bottas in what was Ferrari’s first race with Mattia Binotto as their team principal.

Suffice it to say that this is nowhere near where Ferrari wanted to end up this past weekend, and it is nowhere near where most people envisioned them ending up.

But even before the race ended, the Maranello-based team were in panic mode, and their poor decision-making illustrated it. The scary part about this is the fact that it was justified; they should have been in panic mode, and they should still be in panic mode not just because of their lack of pace but because of the poor decision-making that was brought on by the their struggles.

This poor decision-making was evident in two interconnected circumstances. First of all, Leclerc was running in fifth place toward the end of the race, but he was quickly approaching the clearly slower Vettel in fourth. He clearly had it took to not only take fourth from the four-time champion but to drive away from him.

However, the team told the 21-year-old Monegasque that he was not allowed to pass the 31-year-old German, who was also the beneficiary of a number of team orders from Ferrari during his four-year stint driving for the team as Kimi Raikkonen’s teammate from the 2015 season through the 2018 season.

Here is how this conversation between Leclerc and the team went down.

Secondly, with the opportunity to have Leclerc come into the pits for new tires, which would not have required him to give up fifth place because of the fact that driver who was running in sixth, Rich Energy Haas’ Kevin Magnussen, was so far behind him, Ferrari again whiffed.

This would have given Leclerc, who wasn’t allowed to pass Vettel for fourth place anyway, a chance to record the race’s fastest lap and gain one additional point both for him in the driver standings and for Ferrari in the constructor standings as a result of it.

But instead, Ferrari simply wanted Leclerc to fall further behind Vettel. Instead of Leclerc earning 11 points with a fifth place finish, which Ferrari never gave him the chance to do, he earned the standard 10 points.

Meanwhile, Bottas won the race and earned 26 points as opposed to the standard 25, as he ended up recording the race’s fastest lap. In other words, Mercedes ended up with a two-point swing over Ferrari.

Here is what Binotto had to say about why the decision was made to keep Leclerc on the track in fifth place, according to Crash.

"“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. I think it was more important for us to bring the car home and score the points. 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.”"

Okay, so it “may be a risk”. But is essentially handing Mercedes an extra point without even trying to earn that extra point for Ferrari, an attempt that in all likelihood would have only required Leclerc to sacrifice a few meaningless seconds on the track, not a risk? In reality, it was more of a guaranteed two-point swing in favor of Mercedes as opposed to just simply a risk.

In other words, Ferrari were so far off the pace and so uncompetitive that they were worried about something that they did not need to be worried about because they saw it as a way for them to throw away a chunk of the 22 points (12 with Vettel in fourth place, 10 for Leclerc in fifth) that they appeared to (and did) have in hand.

They effectively thought that the chances of having a disastrous pit stop were greater than Leclerc’s chances to not only record the fastest lap of the race but to avoid coming back on the track and losing several seconds and perhaps fifth place to Magnussen, who still would have been far behind him even if he had made an additional pit stop.

Ferrari’s lack of speed is concerning in itself, but in itself, it would not be a true reason to panic just yet. However, given how they responded to it, they are clearly in panic mode, and the overall complexion of their response illustrates that they should be.

Yes, this race was Binotto’s first race at their new team principal, but while it would be easy to write it off as a bad experience, this just makes the overall situation even more alarming for the team.

Whether or not Ferrari will be able to bounce back from this Australian Grand Prix remains to be seen, but given their overall lack of pace and poor decision-making, the fact that they are in panic mode with just one of the 2019 Formula 1 season’s 21 races in the books is completely justified.

The next race on the schedule is the Bahrain Grand Prix, and this race is scheduled to take place at Bahrain International Circuit in Sakhir, Bahrain on Sunday, March 31. ESPN2 is set to broadcast it live beginning at 11:05 a.m. ET.