“It was a good weekend in terms of pace, the car was fine and Carlos was able to prove it.” – Mattina Binotto said at the end of the 2022 French Grand Prix, where the Maranello team collected a lot less than it could, given the DNF of Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz’s fifth place, after a solid comeback from the Spanish driver, who started from the back of the grid due to several grid penalties for taking fresh power unit parts.
“Charles took pole, he was leading the race and I think he had an advantage over Red Bull in terms of degradation”. After that part of the race where Charles Leclerc had to take care of the front tyres, without stressing them too much, and where Max Verstappen overheated them more than necessary following the Monegasque very closely, the F1-75 began to stabilize at a pace of 38 high while the world champion started lapping above 39. “When Max stopped, we were lapping 2-3 tenths a lap better than him.” – rightly stated Mattia Binotto.
After the world champion’s pit to try the undercut against Ferrari, the Italian team did not bring Charles Leclerc to the pits, even though from the outside it might have looked like he was doing so exactly on the lap of the accident that occurred to the Monegasque. “On Charles’s car the tires were working very well, it was being managed, so our intent was to extend the stint.” stated the Ferrari team principal in the classic post-Grand Prix press conference.
A choice that would have led Charles Leclerc to a single stop strategy and which, according to Ferrari, would have made the strategy more flexible, after seeing that the Hard tire, used by Carlos Sainz in the first stint, was not a great racing tire, certainly slower than the Medium and that would not have guaranteed an important advantage in terms of duration. In short, Ferrari would have accepted to lose track position but rely on the flexibility of the strategy against a Max Verstappen who instead stopped very early.
However, the mistake made by the Monegasque driver killed all the strategic plans of his team. An accident not caused by a problem with the throttle, as it might have seemed from the team radio message after the crash: “There were no problems with the throttle here in France, in short, nothing to do with Austria where there was a problem with a the pedal – said Mattia Binotto – “Charles made a mistake, it can happen”. In trying to get out of the barrier, the Monegasque had a problem similar to that experienced by Checo Perez in Canada, namely he lacked the torque from the engine due to the impact. “I tried to drive away, but there was something wrong with the clutch and I couldn’t reverse, which was a shame because I saw the car and the car wasn’t actually too damaged,” Charles Leclerc said.
As for the strategy with Carlos Sainz, who could not drink during the race due to the overweight of the F1-75 and the choice not to mount the water reserve, it was clearly a conservative strategy decision to collect as many points as possible without risking a second retirement, which would have been dramatic for the Italian team. “I think we made the right choice. Carlos from the track did not have all the information to be able to judge.” – said Mattia Binotto – “We wanted to try to lengthen the stint as much as possible but with all the data available it was clear to us that we could not go all the way with that set of mediums, without encountering safety problems, as possible punctures”.
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In addition to this, for Carlos Sainz it would have been very complicated to create a gap of 5 seconds, the penalty imposed on him for a clear Unsafe Release during his first pit stop, against Checo Perez and George Russell, thus ending up in fifth position anyway. “For safety reasons, and to be able to take the additional point of the fastest lap, it was right to stop. That extra point is important for the team and for Carlos” – concluded Mattia Binotto.
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