Photo: Scuderia Ferrari Press Office
Following last weekend’s Monaco Grand Prix, Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc was understandably frustrated with his team, after a clear strategy error cost him the win. Yesterday, team principal Mattia Binotto came out to acknowledge that Ferrari made not just one, but multiple errors in judgement during the early stages of the race.
Let’s quickly recap what happened: Leclerc was brought in on lap 18 to ditch his wet tires in favor of a new set of intermediates and it all seemed perfectly fine until the Scuderia called him into the pits again four laps later in order to trade those inters for some hards in a double-stack pit stop.
This resulted in Leclerc falling all the way to P4, handing Red Bull’s Sergio Perez the race lead – which the latter would not relinquish as he eventually took victory in Monaco, followed by Leclerc’s teammate, Carlos Sainz.
“First, we need to admit, if you are leading the race and then you’re finding yourself on fourth position, we may have done something wrong,” said Binotto. “So, we certainly made mistakes in our judgement and we made mistakes in our calls. What is the process which brought us to make mistakes?”
“I think the first mistake was underestimating the pace of the intermediates, and the gap we had to the other cars in terms of track position,” added the Ferrari team boss, before acknowledging a second mistake:
“I think we made a mistake as well because we should have called him [Leclerc] earlier, at least a lap early, or if not as we did we should have stayed out and simply stayed on the extreme wet, taking I think the [lead] position, and then maybe switching directly onto the dries.”
Red Bull has now taken a sizeable lead in the 2022 Constructors’ standings with 235 points, while Ferrari remain second with 199 points. Meanwhile, Leclerc trails Max Verstappen in the Driver standings by 9 points, with a total of 116 points to Verstappen’s 125 points.
This resulted in Leclerc falling all the way to P4, handing Red Bull’s Sergio Perez the race lead – which the latter would not relinquish as he eventually took victory in Monaco, followed by Leclerc’s teammate, Carlos Sainz.
“First, we need to admit, if you are leading the race and then you’re finding yourself on fourth position, we may have done something wrong,” said Binotto. “So, we certainly made mistakes in our judgement and we made mistakes in our calls. What is the process which brought us to make mistakes?”
“I think the first mistake was underestimating the pace of the intermediates, and the gap we had to the other cars in terms of track position,” added the Ferrari team boss, before acknowledging a second mistake:
“I think we made a mistake as well because we should have called him [Leclerc] earlier, at least a lap early, or if not as we did we should have stayed out and simply stayed on the extreme wet, taking I think the [lead] position, and then maybe switching directly onto the dries.”
Red Bull has now taken a sizeable lead in the 2022 Constructors’ standings with 235 points, while Ferrari remain second with 199 points. Meanwhile, Leclerc trails Max Verstappen in the Driver standings by 9 points, with a total of 116 points to Verstappen’s 125 points.
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