It’s a Carlos Sainz who doesn’t spare any jabs who presented himself to the microphones at the end of the Spanish GP, the home event for the Madrid native. After the interview with Charles Leclerc, in which he underlined that he did not like his teammate’s attack in the first laps of the race, the Spaniard responded to the other standard bearer of the Red team, with whom there had already been a confrontation in park closed as soon as the two got out of the car.
A comparison that clearly did not calm things down. The offending episode is the overtaking that took place early in the race, in which Sainz attacked on the outside of turn one, but closed the line aggressively, which pushed Leclerc to have to use the entire internal curb. The two thus came into contact, with the Spaniard ending up wide in the escape route, but maintaining his position in front of his teammate.
A maneuver that Leclerc clearly did not like for two reasons: partly due to the aggressiveness of the overtaking attempt, even if the Monegasque tried to defend himself by trying to brake, partly due to the fact that, in the briefing before the race, according to what number 16 himself reported, the riders had been told that they had to manage the new soft tire at that stage of the GP.
Carlos Sainz, Ferrari SF-24
Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images
However, Sainz does not agree with this version, underlining that, on the contrary, the target was to try to push the Mercedes precisely for the fact of having fresher rubber compared to the two Mercedes which, on the contrary, could only have used sets.
“For me it’s very clear, we have a new soft, Mercedes is with a used soft, we have to go on the attack. I did exactly that. I don’t know what happened to Charles on the first lap, but I had the opportunity to overtake him, it’s not like I’ll stay behind for life”, Sainz replied to Sky Italia’s microphones in a direct manner to what Leclerc said in previous interviews when asked to explain his point of view.
“Then I went to attack the Mercedes, I was very close to overtaking them in the first stint because they were on used tires and I was on new ones. I wanted to pass. I don’t know what he’s complaining about, this time I honestly don’t understand what he’s worried about,” added the Spaniard, who made it clear that his objective was to exploit the advantage of the softest new tire available on the track, rather than use it as a simple strategic element that would have allowed to create offsets, as happened in the case of Leclerc.
The interesting aspect is that even the Monegasque’s strategy, in the end, only worked marginally, especially against Hamilton. If at the end of the first stint Leclerc had stopped eight laps after Hamilton, at the end of the second part of the race that margin was reduced by half, too little to hope for a comeback. The comeback almost occurred, however, with George Russell, who was following the same strategy as Sainz, who had stopped early in the second stint to mount the hard tire, a tire which proved to be ineffective, as also demonstrated by the internal comparison between Mercedes.
Carlos Sainz, Ferrari SF-24
Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images
“I think we moved away from the optimal strategy to try to undercut Mercedes. And today it was a bit like in Bahrain: the more optimal we remained in the pit laps, the faster the race was and it was possible to overtake”, added the Spaniard who, in fact, before the second pit stop had asked not to anticipate too much the pit stop to mount the hard.
Beyond the duel with Leclerc, today’s race gave clear answers according to Sainz, especially in terms of values on the field, with McLaren now the main force: “Honestly, I believe that the most consistent car at the moment is the McLaren . I think Red Bull is in trouble on some tracks. Like us. McLaren is fast everywhere. They are fast at low speed. They go straight through the third and ninth turns. They were fastest into turn five. So it doesn’t seem to me that McLaren has any weak points at the moment,” commented Sainz.
On the other hand, the Spaniard highlighted how the result in Barcelona also arises from the peculiarities of the Catalan track, full of fast corners. Yesterday, at the end of qualifying, the Ferrari driver underlined how bouncing had a negative effect on the behavior of the car and it is probable that, in an attempt to contain the problem on fast corners, the engineers had to opt for a set-up which penalized the car in other areas of the track.
Charles Leclerc, Ferrari SF-24, Carlos Sainz, Ferrari SF-24, Pierre Gasly, Alpine A524
Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images
Overall, however, this type of track with very long corners, according to Sainz, still puts the SF-24 into crisis, instead enhancing the strengths of its opponents: “I honestly expected to be at least closer, but when you look at the McLaren and Red Bull are really far away, while Mercedes have improved so much that on these types of tracks they are ahead of us,” added the Madrid native.
“We, however, have to work above all on this type of track. I think that if we returned to Monaco tomorrow, we would fight for the victory, but there are more tracks like Barcelona than Monaco now. For this reason, we need to improve on this type of circuit, because with long corners at medium-high speed, we struggle more than the others.”
“We have to make sure that, when we go to tracks like Spagna or Zandvoort, with long and combined corners, we have to have a more effective package. Instead, there will be races like Monaco and perhaps the one in Austria where we expect to be more competitive.”
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