Scuderia Ferrari Monegasque driver Charles Leclerc is aware he lost a podium finish in the 2021 Turkish Grand Prix due to the strategy decisions in the second part of the Istanbul event, but at the same time admitted he and the Maranello team were “confused” by how fresh sets of intermediate compounds performed in the race.
Most of the drivers went deep into the Graand Prix before deciding to stop to change the intermediate tyres with a fresh set, but Charles Leclerc found himself in the lead and tried a surprise move which could have given him a great win at the Istanbul Park. With the lap times of his rivals not improving to start with, the Monegasque was heard on team radio asking if he could make it to the end of the race on his used set of intermediates.
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Yet Charles was quickly caught and passed by the Mercedes of Valtteri Bottas: Ferrari then decided to bring the Monegasque driver in for new intermediates. While the Italian side’s driver admitted that an early pit stop would have most likely allowed him to finish P3, Charles has no regrets about taking the path he did in the final part of the 2021 Turkish Grand Prix:
“It’s very strange.” – Charles Leclerc said, at the end of today’s event – “I think it was the same a bit for everyone and that’s what confused us a little bit in our choice of when to pit, because I was on used tyres and I heard on the radio, they were telling me the lap times of Valtteri on the new set of inters and he was not very quick at the beginning. I was like, ‘okay, maybe we can stay in front with those used tyres’, but the thing is that, for seven laps, they struggled massively with graining and then, once they went through the graining, they found a lot of pace. Then once they found that pace, we knew basically that we had to stop, so we stopped – but it was too late. Then for the last 10 laps of the race, I was just trying to switch on those inters [but] that never really came to life.” – Scuderia Ferrari Monegasque driver Charles Leclerc concluded.
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