The second Austrian appointment is now archived and for Ferrari, once again, the glass is half full. If last week the Maranello team had managed to finish in sixth and seventh place with Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc, today the team headed by Mattia Binotto managed only with the Spaniard to obtain a noteworthy result.
Yesterday Ferrari decided to sacrifice the qualifying, and not try the passage of Q2 with the red tyre, opting for a recovery race, but the goal was only achieved by Carlos Sainz, while Charles Leclerc found an insurmountable obstacle Sergio in Perez, who ruined the original plans.
The Maranello team has decided to diversify the strategies among its drivers by being able to choose which tires to use before the start. Charles Leclerc thus started with the mediums, while Carlos Sainz used the hard tyres, thus delaying the mandatory pit stop.
The choice turned out to be correct for the Spaniard who eventually crossed the finish line in fifth position, also thanks to the double penalty received by the Mexican, while Charles Leclerc was unable to do better than eighth place.
Mattia Binotto, who spoke at the microphones of Sky Sport F1 HD, commented the race of his two drivers and obviously could not exempt himself from pointing out the defense beyond the limit of the Red Bull driver who affected Charles Leclerc’s race.
“The fifth position I think is a result that reflects our value this weekend. Too bad for Charles because he could have gotten a better position, but when he tried to attack Perez he found himself in the wrong situation.”
Mattia Binotto then defended the team for the choice not to try the passage of Q2 with the red tires. Having the possibility of not using the softest compounds paid off and the team was also able to diversify the strategies between its two drivers:
“Yesterday’s choice in qualifying proved to be correct once again because it allowed us to do a race to aim for fifth place. Thanks to the differentiated strategy we have put ourselves in a position to allow at least one of the two drivers to be able to score a good result. Carlos managed the hard tyres at the beginning, while Charles pushed at the right moment.” – the Ferrari boss explained.
At the end of the triple header of consecutive races, Ferrari left Austria with a gap of 19 points from McLaren in the Constructors standings. Mattia Binotto stressed that the team was aware of the difficulties the it would face at the Red Bull Ring and said he was satisfied with having limited the damage in Spielberg after the Paul Ricard debacle.
“Our car is that of the first race in Bahrain, we are focused on next season. We are aware that we are paying for the lack of power on the straight compared to our rivals, but I think we can have a good season. There have been tracks where our performance has been superior to that of McLaren. We knew that Austria was a favorable track for McLaren and not for us and we closed this double trip with a loss of 3 points overall. It is not a dramatic balance sheet.” – he added.
The next round of Silverstone promises to be equally challenging for the SF21. On a front limited track that should highlight the issues of the 2021 project, the Maranello team will be forced to play defense once again and then be ready to respond in Hungary in early August.
“Silverstone will be a very difficult race due to the wear on the front. We will see a situation similar to that faced in France, but we will try to make different choices compared to those of Paul Ricard, while in Hungary we could find ourselves better, especially in qualifying. The race could be complicated due to tire wear, but we have time to prepare.”
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