Photo Credit: Scuderia Ferrari
It was a P4 and P5 finish for the two Ferrari drivers of Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc respectively today in the Sprint Race at Spa. Crossing the finish line in P5 and P6 but the Ferrari drivers each inherited a place due to Hamilton’s 5 second penalty for a collision with Red Bull’s Sergio Perez.
However with both drivers dropping back a position each from their grid positions, it still can’t be a day of satisfaction for Ferrari with both drivers complaining of their pit stops post-race.
Carlos Sainz was frustrated with Gasly overtaking him in the pits and says his team need to look into his slow stop.
“In the pits we were compromised as Gasly overtook us, we will have to look at it because it probably cost us a podium in the sprint today but the pace wasn’t that bad actually.
“The call was right to go in on the first lap but you could see with Piastri, he was P1 and I boxed right behind him and I was P7, so there must have been something with our stop that clearly didn’t work. I was held for a very long time, I don’t know if we were over cautious or what but we need to look at it. The car that I’m behind goes P1 when we box and I go P7,” explained the Spaniard.
Leclerc was forced to pit a lap later than he would have wanted in order to ditch his wet tyres for intermediates, as he was too close on the road to his team mate Sainz and would have been heavily compromised by trying to double stack behind one another.
Leclerc spoke about how there was nothing they could do but pit a lap later — but was frustrated that it was still a slow stop.
“In an ideal world I would have come in straight away but I think we did the right choice, we would have lost too much time if I was pitting behind Carlos so I had no choice, it wasn’t ideal of course but it’s the way it is,” said the Monegasque.
“But what hurt us even more was the slow pit stop. From this we need to look into it as it’s been two races where we are struggling a bit more with the pit stops, and we will look into it. As I said many times when we are not fast enough we need to maximise all our points and today we didn’t so.”
With Leclerc starting on pole position, he is hoping for dry conditions as his downforce level is perfect for those conditions, and noted that it would not suit McLaren who are running lots of downforce for the middle sector.
“If it’s dry tomorrow I’m really happy with mine, and I think McLaren will be not so happy with theirs. If it’s wet I think McLaren will be very happy and we won’t be, so it depends. Lets wait and see — McLaren can be surprising sometimes and maybe there choice was surprising but quick for tomorrow.”
