I had a moment of revelation at the start of this grand prix - around about when Leclerc and Hamilton moved past Verstappen and Russell - this Ferrari car isn't bad. It's not as good as the Mercedes, but the Mercedes is a good car, even if it's not as good as *that* rocket ship Mercedes or that Red Bull. See also sort of keeping up with the Mercedes cars after they overtake.
I'm not quite sure what to do with the information.
Mostly because having a good car isn't enough, you need good drivers (we've got that) and a solid strategy team ... which Ferrari haven't got. This time it was Hamilton who was affected by strategy gremlins. Now I am guessing they had to do some quick thinking following the 5 second time penalty but they didn't seem to have communicated the revised plan to their driver which is a really quick way of losing the driver's trust.
Hamilton did seem to be having a day of it; between the penalty and the pit-stop incident and the "not doing what he wanted doing to his front wing" and ... Thankfully the pit crew member appears to be fine.
I am of the camp that think Hamilton got walloped with a penalty where Leclerc didn't because Russell ended up out while Piastri managed to get the car to the finish.
As to other non-Ferrari matters (other than Bottas holding up Leclerc to allow Antonelli to catch him and my tin foil hat insisting it was deliberate), Hadjar and Verstappen appear to be the pairing Red Bull have been looking for for years. Not sure if that's because the way the cars are set up under the current regulations doesn't suit Verstappen as well as previous cars or Hadjar is that good (I tend towards "Hadjar is that good" but I acknowledge my biases). Racing Bull and Alpine seem to be coming along nicely, as do Audi. For Aston Martin, the only way is up. I'm intrigued about their update coming at Hungary.
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