It was a Saturday focused on damage control for Ferrari at the Interlagos circuit. Charles Leclerc will start from the front row in the long race of the Brazilian Grand Prix tomorrow, so he decided to sacrifice the Sprint day a bit. In the Sprint Shootout, he chose not to use a new set of soft tires in Q3, preserving them for tomorrow.
This choice relegated him to the seventh position on the grid for the short race. He then improved his position in the Sprint, climbing up to fifth. As a result, along with Carlos Sainz’s eighth place, it allowed Mercedes to gain only two points in the battle for the second place in the Constructors’ Championship, thanks to George Russell’s fourth place and Lewis Hamilton’s seventh.
If the target is to challenge the rivals from Brackley, it didn’t go too badly. However, what worries the Monegasque driver is the substantial gap not only from Max Verstappen’s Red Bull but also from Lando Norris’s McLaren, which has shown significant improvement in recent outings.
“I expected a bit more, but compared to our competitors, especially Mercedes, today wasn’t bad. However, when we look at Red Bull and McLaren, especially the latter, they seem to have made a big step forward. On all tracks, now they perform much better than us in races. We need to find solutions because our package is not on par with theirs at the moment,” Charles Leclerc said in an interview with Sky Sport F1.
Regarding his race, he explained that he had to manage a lot in the early stages due to high temperatures to prevent the engine from overheating. But in the long run, his pace was not bad, allowing him to catch up with Hamilton after passing Yuki Tsunoda’s AlphaTauri at the start. Tomorrow, therefore, the front row could be an advantage to exploit.
“I struggled in the first part of the race because I had to save a lot due to the temperatures. Tomorrow, starting second, we’ll have fewer cars in front, and we hope this can help us. However, the feeling in the first laps was not bad. I knew it was a long race, so I controlled at the beginning, plus I had to manage the engine, so towards the end, I could push a bit more.” – he pointed out.
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When asked if today’s race might have raised doubts about whether it was the right choice to save a new set of soft tires for tomorrow’s race, Charles Leclerc appeared convinced that it was a smart move.
“I don’t have that doubt honestly. If we also look at Tsunoda’s race, who was behind me, and we had the same pace. Normally, it’s not like that, but today he had a new tire, and we saw the benefit. This makes me quite optimistic for tomorrow. Then we must be cautious about what we say: yes, I’m optimistic, but we won’t go to win. The weekend’s goal is to beat the Mercedes, and today, by putting on a new tire in qualifying, we might have done better. But by how much? Maybe just one position, so for me, it was worth making the choice we did,” the Moneqasue driver concluded at the end of the Brazil Sprint race.
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