It was a complex and challenging weekend for Charles Leclerc in Austin. The Ferrari driver started the three-day event well, securing pole position in Friday’s qualifying at the Circuit of the Americas, but he couldn’t replicate his success in the Sprint Shootout on Saturday morning or during the Sprint Race. This downward trend continued into the Grand Prix, where the Monegasque driver, despite starting from pole position, only managed to finish in sixth place (before being disqualified, along with Lewis Hamilton, for excessive wear of the plank on his SF-23), thanks to a completely incorrect race strategy adopted by the Maranello pit wall.
A strategy that didn’t make the number 16 driver happy, who even finished the race in a photo finish with George Russell’s Mercedes and had expressed his displeasure with the strategy based on a single pit stop starting on the mediums and finishing on the hards while the race was still ongoing. But in addition to the flawed strategy, Charles Leclerc’s weekend was complicated by intense pain he had been dealing with since Thursday, caused by a tooth infection.
This issue was something the former Alfa Romeo driver talked about after the race during the usual media interviews. The problem had gradually improved for Fréd Vasseur’s driver during the weekend, but probably due to the strong painkillers he had taken, it still accompanied him, albeit mildly, during the race on Sunday.
“I had a tooth infection, I think it was a wisdom tooth. I had a lot of pain on Thursday, then it calmed down on Friday, and today everything was fine. I’ve been taking very strong painkillers since Thursday. For some reason, it’s fine now, but I think it’s because I took the painkillers before the race. I had more intense moments, but nothing that affected me inside the car.” – the Monegasque driver pointed out.
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In the end, this problem proved to be irrelevant to the race, which was instead compromised by Ferrari’s incorrect strategy. After putting his health issues aside, Charles briefly analyzed it.
“At the beginning of the race, we thought that the one-stop and two-stop strategies were close to each other. After 12 laps, I checked the numbers on the cockpit display, and they were good for a one-stop. I wasn’t losing much time. Considering the numbers, it was the right thing to do, so I opted for a single pit stop, but it was definitely wrong. Clearly there was something wrong with the data; they were far from the ideal strategy.” – Scuderia Ferrari Monegasque driver Charles Leclerc concluded at the end of the United States Grand Prix in Austin.
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