Charles Leclerc vents against Ferrari
The words of Charles Leclerc
Charles Leclerc, who started from the pole position, finished in sixth place in the U.S. Grand Prix, complicit in the decision to make only one pit stop.
Over the radio the Monegasque è vented: "I could not do better with this strategy. I think I optimized everything" His track engineer tried to console him (“You managed the tires well“) but the retort è was even heavier: "It doesn’t matter when we have such a shitty result….a".
"We can’t hide the fact that a single stop è was definitely the wrong choice – he later added to the microphones of Sky Sports -. We have to look at our numbers becauseé both strategies were very similar, but it was not the case to risk the one-stop one becauseé I made much more effort. If we look at the degradation on the hard è it was good, but the two stops would have been the better choice. At the moment I didn’t know for what reason I had to give up the position to Carlos, then I è was told that Perez was catching up. There wasn’t much to do and I understand that you had to let Carlos pass to make sure he didn’t lose time behind me. On that I am not angry, but I am disappointed with the strategy".
Team principal Frederic Vasseur commented as follows: "Obviously I have regrets because" when you start from pole you can’t be happy with a 4° and a 6° place. On Sainz’s side everything è went pretty well, we finished about four seconds behind Norris and I think it was a pretty well managed race. On Charles è side it was different, we went with one stop and clearly it è was not the right decision. We compromised his race with the strategy".
"We had discussed this strategy with him, we didn’t take it to the race wall all of a sudden. It was one of the options, but the numbers we had were probably not among the best. The others decided on the two stops with more conviction, which we didn’t: we need to improve on that. The overtaking of Carlos we did just to save time for Charles as well, who in fact è managed to stay ahead of Russell on the’last lap", he concluded.
