Photo: Sky Sports F1/Twitter
If you watched the British Grand Prix, you could observe the latest mistake in a long line of bad strategic calls from Scuderia Ferrari.
However, Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto released a statement explaining why they didn't pit Charles Leclerc under the safety car. But before that, let me give a little background on all this.
On Lap 39, the Alpine of Esteban Ocon stopped on the old start/finish straight line due to a mechanical failure. While the track marshalls were doing everything to get rid of the car, the safety car was brought out. At that time, Charles Leclerc was leading the race, followed by Spanish teammate Carlos Sainz and seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton.
However, only Sainz was called into the pits to fit the soft tires, with Leclerc being left out on the track with an old set of hards. As a result, everyone behind the Monegasque was on faster tires, making him fall to the fourth position.
As you can imagine, Charles was very frustrated by the Ferrari decision, but Binotto explained that this was the only solution.
"We believed that we didn't have enough space between the two cars to stop both of them, so we had to make a choice between the first or the second car, so we decided to stop Carlos because Charles had the track position and was the leader of the race at that time, so you don't know what the others would have done if we had stopped as the leader," said Ferrari boss, Mattia Binotto. "And then we were hoping for more tire degradation on the soft – that didn't happen."
Charles Leclerc was very unlucky in the last few of races. From mechanical failures to mistakes made by his crew, he lost crucial points in the championship battle. Maybe Ferrari learned from their past mistakes, and things will turn around.
On Lap 39, the Alpine of Esteban Ocon stopped on the old start/finish straight line due to a mechanical failure. While the track marshalls were doing everything to get rid of the car, the safety car was brought out. At that time, Charles Leclerc was leading the race, followed by Spanish teammate Carlos Sainz and seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton.
However, only Sainz was called into the pits to fit the soft tires, with Leclerc being left out on the track with an old set of hards. As a result, everyone behind the Monegasque was on faster tires, making him fall to the fourth position.
As you can imagine, Charles was very frustrated by the Ferrari decision, but Binotto explained that this was the only solution.
"We believed that we didn't have enough space between the two cars to stop both of them, so we had to make a choice between the first or the second car, so we decided to stop Carlos because Charles had the track position and was the leader of the race at that time, so you don't know what the others would have done if we had stopped as the leader," said Ferrari boss, Mattia Binotto. "And then we were hoping for more tire degradation on the soft – that didn't happen."
Charles Leclerc was very unlucky in the last few of races. From mechanical failures to mistakes made by his crew, he lost crucial points in the championship battle. Maybe Ferrari learned from their past mistakes, and things will turn around.
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