Ferrari managed to place its two single-seaters on the front row for the start of the Monaco Grand Prix, but its drivers reached the finish line second and fourth respectively, seeing how Red Bull won for the fourth consecutive race, as well as a double podium.
Everything was decided in the first pit stops. On a track that was already very close to drying out, the Austrian team was the first to take the plunge and mount intermediate tyres, making a big difference between the pace of their drivers and those of Ferrari. In response, those from Maranello called the then leader, Charles Leclerc, into the pits, but it was too late and he was unable to maintain the lead.
A few laps later they made the decision to switch from extreme wet tires to dry compounds with Carlos Sainz. But in a strategic mistake, Leclerc got the call on the same lap as his teammate. And, although the mechanics were really fast in that double stop, he lost time. Sainz returned to the track second, and the Monegasque fourth.
“I apologize for what happened,” team principal Mattia Binotto said. “We made a basic strategy mistake. If a driver starts first and finishes fourth, you have done something wrong. As justification, I can only say that the race conditions were very difficult.”
“Our cars in Monaco were very fast. We lost because of our own mistakes, and now we have to analyze everything. We underestimated the speed of the intermediate tyres, and maybe we should have put them on Charles [Leclerc], or waited to change in the rain. to dry”.
“You have to analyze everything with a cool head, but Charles is right to blame the team for the mistakes made, because it really was.”
“Unfortunately, from the beginning we had to respond to the actions of our rivals and not command the strategy. We were not surprised that they stopped first, what we did not expect was that they were suddenly so fast on intermediate tyres.”
“When we stopped Carlos [Sainz], we had already lost ground, even Leclerc was no longer the leader. Also, Carlos went out into traffic and ran into Nicholas Latifi. If he let himself pass right away [he had blue flags] we could have won the race is him.”
“In general, we discuss the strategy for the race with the drivers and work out exactly how and when to switch from wet to dry directly. Lewis Hamilton has done that strategy and it has worked out for him many times in the past. But over the course of the race , everything went wrong”.
“I don’t even know what would have been better, putting intermediate tires on Leclerc earlier, which is what they did at Red Bull, or not putting them on and going straight to the dry ones, like we did with Sainz ,” concluded Mattia Binotto .
