Scuderia Ferrari Spanish driver Carlos Sainz admitted “we will never know what would have been best” for him at the Circuit Paul Ricard in Le Castellet, as the Maranello team decided to call him in for a second pit stop while he was in third place in the French Grand Prix and his tyre seemed to still work at that stage of the race.
The Spaniard had to start the race from the back of the grid due to taking new power unit components after his fiery end to the Austrian Grand Prix two weeks ago. This meant Carlos had a difficult task in France, as he attempted to recover as much ground as possible and get back in the points.
With this in mind, he began the race on hard tyres and made good progress through the field. Meanwhile his Maranello team-mate Charles Leclerc crashed out from the lead on lap 18 of 53 which meant the Safety Car was deployed and most of the drivers took advantage to pit, including Carlos Sainz. The Maranello team fitted new medium tyres, but due to an unsafe release he was handed a five-second penalty. The plan was for Carlos to get to the end on the medium tyres, but as Carlos was involved in a series of close duels, which led to more tyre wear, Ferrari felt there would have been a significant risk on their part.
Carlos Sainz was communicating over team radio asking about his strategy, with a two-stop being his preferred option and, with a big enough lap count to catch up, he could have potentially made his way onto the podium. Initially Ferrari suggested he could try and get to the end of the race. However, after overtaking the Red Bull of Sergio Perez, the Maranello team called him in with ten laps to go until the checkered flag.
The Ferrari driver returned to the track in ninth place and immediately made his way back into the top five, also securing the fastest lap of the French Grand Prix, but the lengthy gap to Sergio Perez and George Russell meant he had to settle for fifth place. After the race, Ferrari was criticised for the way they managed Caros Sainz’s tyre strategy, but having admitted “I don’t understand” their call during the race, he was able to explain his and the Maranello team’s thinking behind the calls:
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“My point of view was that if I couldn’t pass Checo, I would box because I’m P4 and there’s nothing really going on. And [if] I cannot pass Checo, let’s try and box and come back. The moment I passed Checo, I was like ‘okay, I’m P3, let’s see if I can pull away five seconds and make it to the end with these tyres. At that stage, our numbers said that [it was] impossible to make it to the end, plus the five-second penalty you risk even losing position to Fernando or whatever. So the team took it to play it safe, we knew P5 plus fastest lap is good points – and we took P5 plus fastest lap. In the moment maybe my feeling was different but until [now] I don’t see the numbers and everything is impossible for me. I think we will never know what would have been the best.” -Scuderia Ferrari Spanish driver Carlos Sainz explained.
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