Scuderia Ferrari Monegasque driver Charles Leclerc confirmed that he will work together with Carlos Sainz in the Dutch Grand Prix at Circuit Zandvoort, as the two F1-75 cars will start the race behind Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, who remains favourite to win in front of his home fans.
The Dutchman therefore will line-up on pole position on the Zandvoort grid as he looks for his fourth race win in a row, that would be the Red Bull driver’s longest ever winning streak. But Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz are ready to launch a two-pronged attack.
Charles Leclerc is starting the Dutch Grand Prix from second place, as the Monegasque driver missed out on pole position by just 0.021s due to a small error at Turn 10 on his final fast lap, while his Maranello teammate Carlos Sainz is third.
Charles Leclerc confirmed that the team-mates will work together to do everything possible to stop Max Verstappen’s winning series: “It’s going to be close with Red Bull,” he said, “but we just need to do a great start and then we’ll see. The easy way would be a great start, P1 in Turn 1, and then leave Max behind, but if that doesn’t happen, Carlos and I are in the front, so let’s see what we can do there. I think you always try to work together whenever you are in this position.” – Charles explained on Saturday.
The Ferrari driver added: “We’re going to discuss the options available. To be honest, I haven’t looked at all the possibilities completely. Obviously Max with a new set of soft is going to be strong whenever he uses it because here from a scrubbed to a new, at least for our car, is quite a bit of a difference as the degradation is very high. So, we are going to need to check how we can do it.”
Carlos Sainz feels the the Maranello team will be able to “play” with their strategy given the fact that Red Bull’s second driver started behind so there should be a two against one battle, at least for the first half of the race. However, the Spaniard pointed out that neither driver has a brand new set of softs available to them for the Zandvoort race:
“I think it’s going to be an interesting day. There’s going to be a lot going on, even if it’s a difficult track to overtake, there’s still going to be many options with strategies. I think we can pretty much work together. We can play around with strategy. It is also true that Max has a set of new tyres that we don’t have, that gives him a bit of an edge, but even with that I’m pretty sure that we can at least challenge him and make his life a bit difficult.” – he explained.
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Carlos Sainz, however, believes Max Verstappen should not be the Italian side’s only focus in the Dutch Grand Prix, taking into consideration the speed shown by the Mercedes with Lewis Hamilton starting from right behind him and George Russell in sixth place.
“I think they’re going to be at least as quick as us in the race,” he said of Mercedes. “And I think they’re going to be in the mix around the pit stops. And yeah, it’s going to be a good fight with the other five cars.”
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