After the great pole and the entire front row conquered by Ferrari yesterday at the Mexican Grand Prix, it was clear that the Reds did not have the necessary qualities to be able to aspire to victory in the American event, if not thanks to factors beyond its control.
These did not occur, relegating the two SF-23s of Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz to third and fourth, overtaken by Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton.
What made everything complicated was a less good start than expected, which allowed Max, Perez and the others to attack the Ferraris from the first corner, creating the chaos that led to the retirement of Perez and Max at the top.
At the end of the race, Ferrari team principal Frédéric Vasseur commented on the Reds’ race to Sky Sport, underlining how the bad start of his drivers played a fundamental role.
“I’m not satisfied with the start. It’s not a question of management, it’s that we started badly and gave the slipstream to everyone, losing control of the situation. First of all, if you start badly you lose ground from the others and lose the slipstream. This led Charles to being between Verstappen and Perez and, later, having contact with them. At that point part of the wing broke and we also had problems with Carlos. But the underlying problem is that we started badly, because Max is already in front of Carlos after a few meters”.
Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images
Contact between Charles Leclerc, Ferrari SF-23 and Sergio Perez, Red Bull Racing RB19 at the start
“We’re not satisfied, it’s not a good result if we look at the grid. I would say, however, that the weekend isn’t so bad for the pace in qualifying and the pace in the first stint was also good despite having damage to the front wing on the car of Leclerc. We managed to stay close to Verstappen. But then we struggled on the restart with the Hard tyres. Our race got much worse after the restart, at least compared to others. Third and fourth place are not dramatic, but we have to do better next race”.
In the contact with Perez, Leclerc suffered damage to the front wing (lost the left endplate), thus losing part of the balance of his car. The biggest problem, however, was related to the tyres. On the restart after the red flag displayed due to a bad accident suffered by Kevin Magnussen, Leclerc had a train of Hard to be able to reach the end. These, however, did not guarantee the expected performances.
“After the initial accident I believe that the balance of Leclerc’s car was not ideal. But we struggled due to a tire problem. The Medium tire was better for our car and Max’s gap was relative to the damage we had. We I managed the gap from him well despite having some damage. Instead, with the Hard tyres, we struggled with the pace.”
“It was much more difficult to restart and have a good pace. We were surprised to see Hamilton doing so many laps on Medium tyres. For the second stint we couldn’t count on a set of new Mediums. We only had one used after the qualifying and was a bit at the limit for the duration,” concluded the Ferrari team principal.
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