Carlos Sainz claimed his first Formula 1 win at Sunday’s British Grand Prix, overtaking team-mate Charles Leclerc with ten laps to go.
The set of soft tires that the Spaniard had, which he fitted to his car during the safety car period, was key in this exchange of positions after the restart.
Ferrari opted to keep Leclerc out and not call him into the pits while the Safety Car assembled the cars, both because his hard tires were fresher than his teammate’s and because of his better track position, but the Monegasque finished falling to fourth position in the closing stages of the race.
Towards the end of the safety car period, Ferrari asked Sainz to move away from Leclerc and open a gap between them of ten cars, the maximum allowed, in order to try to protect the current leader from the chasing group.
However, Sainz refused to comply with this request, using the radio to let Ferrari know that he was under pressure from Lewis Hamilton from behind, adding: “Please don’t ask these things. Please. Please. Stop making things up.” . Stop inventing. I’m under pressure too.”
Ferrari boss Mattia Binotto said that request was made to Sainz because the restart of the race could have been “more difficult” for Leclerc, given that the Monegasque was disadvantaged by his hard compounds, compared to the soft ones. of the pursuers. But he also recognized that, perhaps, creating the gap that was asked of him would not have been possible in a simple way.
“We have full confidence [in him], we know he is doing the best he can for the team, for himself without a doubt, but [also] for the team,” Binotto said of the Spanish driver.
“He clearly showed that a few laps earlier, changing his position without discussion, and even when he made the first pit [stop] before Charles [Leclerc], we had no discussion, because he has full confidence in the team, in the way he that we are acting and in the way he is behaving.
“So again, [I’m] very happy. I know he’s done his best. There was probably no way he was going to give Charles room.”
“I think he did the best he could to [get] a Ferrari win here at Silverstone.”
Sainz explained after the race that he was concerned about losing Leclerc’s slipstream , which could leave both Ferraris vulnerable to being overtaken by Hamilton.
“I tried to explain to them that I had probably the fastest man on the track behind me today,” said Sainz.
“If I went 10 meters away, I could lose a little slipstream. And if [Hamilton] passed me, Charles would have been a dead man as well.”
“So my decision was to get into the lead as soon as possible, because I knew I was going to get into the lead before Turn 6, with the grip I had on the soft and go from there and try not to affect his race by getting into the lead. “.
“I asked the team, ‘look, leave it to me, I’m going to do as clean as possible’. And the truth is that Charles did a great job to almost stay in second place. Sometimes, the driver’s feelings are already there Sometimes the team can tell you something you don’t agree with and you do your thing because you really believe in it.
“But I trust the team a lot and today we had a very good race and we trust each other in this type of scenario, as you have seen,” Sainz reiterated.
