On the crazy Sunday in Suzuka that crowned Max Verstappen world champion for the second consecutive time with four races ahead of the end of the season, the hopes of the Ferrari fans were all pinned on Charles Leclerc. The Monegasque, however, after keeping the pace of the Red Bull driver in the first part of the race, found himself five seconds behind his Dutch rival following the pit stop for the switch from ‘wet’ to intermediate tires. At this point Leclerc immediately tried to mend the margin he had created, however putting his tires under excessive stress.
According to Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto, it is for this reason that the vertical collapse of performance suffered by # 16 in the second part of the Japanese race was due, when the Ferrari driver even lost a second per lap from Verstappen, instead seeing himself catch up. quickly from Sergio Perez’s second Red Bull. Interviewed by Sky Sport F1 Binotto, who followed the race from the remote garage in Maranello, went into detail on the problems suffered by the only F1-75 left on the track after the retirement of Carlos Sainz.
“Regarding Leclerc’s pace, the hypothesis is that he pushed too much at the beginning and didn’t manage the tires well, which broke and had graining. In the wet then you do not clean them anymore. Leclerc himself commented on the radio that he was unable to turn the car – the Ferrari boss admitted – the first laps in which he tried to recover from Max compromised the entire race. It is something to learn from, also because we had already seen something on Friday. It also takes some mea culpa. On the dry and wet laps the car proved to be competitive and to be able to play pole and victory – concluded Binotto – today Max was the best and managed the tires well. But we understood the problems we had in Spa and addressed them in some way. There are still four races left, in which we will try to achieve that result that we haven’t achieved for too many races ”.
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