Scuderia Ferrari drivers Charles Leclerc warned that he and his Maranello team-mate Carlos Sainz “cannot afford” to fight against each other on Sunday in the start of the Formula 1 Austrian Grand Prix with the same intensity as was the case earlier today at the Red Bull Ring in the sprint event. However, both Charles and Carlos agree that the time they lost while fighting behind Max Verstappen did not affect the outcome of the Sprint race.
Charles Leclerc expressed this idea not as a complaint about what happened today in Austria, but rather to point out the different circumstances which Ferrari will face during tomorrow’s Austrian Grand Prix.
The Monegasque admitted that he did lose a few seconds conce due to the internal duel but at the same time he does not feel he could have overtaken Max Verstappen on track today. Carlos Sainz agreed and pointed out how “in control” Red Bull driver Max Verstappen was in the lead, but also highlighted the need in Sunday’s race for the two Ferrari cars to be closer to the Dutchman at the start and end of stints.
“Tomorrow is going to be a long race and time management will be quite a bit more important. compared to today. So probably tomorrow we cannot afford to do what we did today” – Charles Leclerc said after the sprint race.
He continued explaining that the time lost to the battle was only “a little bit”: “Whether this was enough to get the win, I don’t think so because Max was also managing them [the tyres] once he had the gap, so we’ll never know what will have happened.”
Carlos Sainz felt that there was little to lose or gain for the Italian side given the race situation.
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“There were a few battles going on at the beginning, first at the start and then on [lap seven], which was fun,’ – the Spanish driver explained.
“It was a shame that I couldn’t get him in the end. He had a pretty good exit at Turn 3 and it wasn’t quite enough to get him..From there on I lost a bit of grip in the tyres, on the front and the rears, and I had to recover the battery, the tyres and get back into a rhythm. There was very little to gain or lose by the fight. We are talking about one point more, one point less because in the sprint there’s not many points and also Max looked very in control the whole race. So it’s not like we lost out massively.” – he added.
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