Scuderia Ferrari Monegasque driver Charles Leclerc insists he had no issues with the Maranello team’s decision to change positions between the two drivers in the 2021 Formula 1’s Mexican Grand Prix, despite seemingly delaying the moment in which he let teammate Carlos Sainz Jr overtake him.
Charles and his Ferrari team-mate were involved in a battle for a place just outside the podiun with the AlphaTauri of Pierre Gasly throughout the Mexico City Grand Prix at Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez.
The Italian side decided to split its strategy between the two drivers in order to put pressure on Pierre Gasly, as Carlos Sainz who extended his first stint to be able to rely on fresher tyres in the final part of the race. While it became clear that Charles Leclerc could not catch the AlphaTauri, Ferrari wanted to give Carlos a chance at overtaking the Frenchman.
At that moment, the Maranello team issued a radio instruction to Charles Leclerc who was asked to let Carlos Sainz pass, but did not appear to get an immediate confirmation from the Monegasque driver.
A few moments later, Carlos Sainz suggested that his teammate was pushing hard, and locking up in order to stay ahead of him.
Yet Charles did eventually make room for the Spanish driver, who attempted to reduce the gap to the AlphaTauri but in the end Carlos gave the position back.
Despite the fact that Charles Leclerc’s delay in allowing Carlos Sainz through suggested he was not too pleased about the situation, he actually explained that giving up the place was not that easy due to the influence of backmarkers.
“I was okay with it,” explained Leclerc about the team orders call. “Basically, I had a very tough time with the hard tyres in the first laps with the things I was complaining on the radio. As soon as I was asked to let him by, I had the blue flag so I had to go through [George] Russell and [Lance] Stroll, so the two cars that had blue flags in front of me. We waited one lap and actually on that lap the fronts cleared, and I gained one second in one lap. Then the team told me: standby don’t give the position back. Then two laps later they asked me to give it back, and I gave it.”
Carlos Sainz thinks that the delay in Charles Leclerc letting him through did cost some time.
Asked if he felt that could have made the difference in his fight with Gasly, the Spanish driver said: “It is a tricky question. Right when I caught Charles he was also lapping a Williams and an Aston, so the situation gets a bit trickier and a bit messy. Obviously he’s being told to let me by but, at the same time, he’s trying to clear the blue flags. I’m not going to lie, I lost two or three seconds of race time there that, as a team, we need to see how we can maybe improve it the next time. But it is very tricky. I mean, position swaps are probably the most tricky bit in F1 and this time we got it fairly right. So yes, I lost a bit of time there but we will try to see what we could have done different and learn for the next one.”
But despite the potential for the swap having been done earlier, Carlos Sainz confirmed the Mexico City Grand Prix was a valuable lesson for everyone at Ferrari on the importance of team work on and off the track
“What is important is that we get confident as a team to do it and respect the team orders. It will happen later this season or in the following years to come that that we might be in a similar situation. So as teammates and as a whole team, we need to get comfortable at the switching positions at some tracks, like we’ve done in other races. I think as a team, we executed it nicely.” – he concluded.
Leave a Reply