Formula 1: With Charles Leclerc on pole, Ferrari cannot afford to screw up

Charles Leclerc took the first pole position of his Formula 1 career for the Bahrain Grand Prix. Scuderia Ferrari cannot afford to screw up this race.

Scuderia Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc recorded a top lap time of  87.886 seconds (137.756 miles per hour), which is a new track record, around the 15-turn, 3.363-mile (5.412-kilometer) Bahrain International Circuit road course in Sakhir, Bahrain in the third and final round of qualifying for the second race of the 21-race 2019 Formula 1 season, the Bahrain Grand Prix.

As a result, Leclerc is set to start this race from the pole position. He beat teammate Sebastian Vettel, whose top lap time in the third and final round of qualifying for the race was 88.160 seconds (137.328 miles per hour), by 0.294 seconds (0.429 miles per hour), which is a significant gap between the two Ferrari drivers, to take the pole position, and he is set to start this race alongside his teammate.

This pole position is the first career Formula 1 pole position for the 21-year-old Monegasque, who has driven in only one race, the 2019 season opener, for Ferrari. This race, the Australian Grand Prix, which is typically one of Ferrari’s best races, did not go according to plan for the Italian team in any way, shape or form.

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With Vettel running in fourth place and Leclerc running in fifth but rapidly catching the four-time champion as the laps wound down in the 58-lap race around the 16-turn, 3.296-mile (5.304-kilometer) Melbourne Grand Prix Circuit road course in Albert Park, Melbourne, Australia, Leclerc was ordered by Ferrari not to pass his teammate but to instead increase his gap to him.

Ferrari would not even allow Leclerc to make a pit stop for new tires in an attempt to record the race’s fastest lap and score one bonus point as a result of it despite the fact that the driver who was running in sixth place at the time, Rich Energy Haas’ Kevin Magnussen, would have been nowhere near passing Leclerc for fifth even had Leclerc made a pit stop, although they later admitted that this decision was a mistake even after first defending it.

Heading into the Bahrain Grand Prix, there is no clear top driver at Ferrari despite the fact that they used team orders to prevent Leclerc from challenging, and likely passing, Vettel for fourth place in the season opener. Vettel currently sits in fourth place in the driver standings with 12 points while Leclerc sits right behind him in fifth with 10 points.

Vettel was prioritized at Ferrari quite often from his first season driving for the team, the 2015 season, through the 2018 season, which is the final season during which Kimi Raikkonen drove for the team.

These two drivers were teammates during this four-year span, a four-year span during which Vettel earned 13 victories and took 10 pole positions while Raikkonen earned only one victory and took only two pole positions.

But with Leclerc set to make the first pole position start of his Formula 1 career in only the 2019 season’s second race, Ferrari cannot afford to screw up by prioritizing Vettel, especially not to the extent of making Leclerc move aside to allow Vettel to win the race like Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport did to Valtteri Bottas to allow Hamilton to win last year’s Russian Grand Prix.

I said it before the season began, and I will say it again now. Ferrari cannot afford to prioritize Vettel, period. As we have seen in each of the last two seasons, Vettel has had a great chance to defeat Hamilton with Ferrari at their current strength, yet he has thrown away a boatload of points through a plethora of unforced errors in each of these two seasons, potentially costing himself two championships in the process.

Why prioritize a driver who has demonstrated time and time again that he cannot put together a full 21-race season that is superior to that of Hamilton?

The 2019 season is young enough that it is still anything but clear when it comes to determining who Ferrari’s top driver is. I am certainly not saying that Ferrari need to prioritize Leclerc, but the last thing they need to be doing with one race down and 20 remaining on this year’s schedule is prioritizing Vettel, especially after Leclerc was clearly faster than him in the season opener and after Leclerc took the pole position for the Bahrain Grand Prix over him by a sizable margin.

The Bahrain Grand Prix is a great opportunity for Leclerc and Ferrari as a whole to show the strength that many people thought they lacked following their disappointing effort in the season opener.

They cannot afford to screw up this opportunity, and given what Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto had to say about the matter even before qualifying for the race took place, they appear to be in a good position as far as not doing so is concerned.

How will the Bahrain Grand Prix play out for Ferrari? Will they prioritize Sebastian Vettel over Charles Leclerc, or will they allow the two drivers to fight like they have made clear that they plan to do? This race, which is the second of 21 races on the 2019 Formula 1 schedule, is scheduled to air live on ESPN2 from Bahrain International Circuit beginning later this morning at 11:00 a.m. ET.