Scuderia Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto has provided details about what the Maranello team were taking into consideration at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez in Mexico City, as Charles Leclerc and his Ferrari race engineer Xavier Marcos Padros talked about ‘plan C’ during the race.
The Italian side had a very difficult weekend at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez, as Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc were not able to get involved in the battle for a podium finish, having to settle for a P5 and P6 at the end of the Mexican Grand Prix, almost one minute behind the RB18 car of race winner Max Verstappen.
Scuderia Ferrari has been heard on several occasions during the current Formula 1 championship discussing possible strategy solutions with Charles Leclerc and Carlos, as the decision-making process seems to be more collaborative than at other teams.
Ferrari boss Mattia Binotto explained:
““With Charles, at one stage he asked for plan C. This was a solution that was simply switching to a two-stop because he knew that the tyres were difficult, but he would have simply pitted into traffic behind seven cars and it would not have been the right stop. The one-stop was the main plan and I think at the end of the day, it was the right plan for the race.” – he added.
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When asked if the team had also considered a strategy based on two tyre changes at that stage of the Mexican Grand Prix, the Ferrari team principal replied: “No. We saw that the one-stop would have been the fastest race here, so our main plan was on a one-stop race with the soft and medium.”
Unfortunately the Maranello team was far off the pace last weekend at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez in Mexico City and top speed was a key issue for the Italian side due to the high altitude and thin air, two main reasons for which the Mexican Grand Prix is always considered somewhat of an outlier on the Formula 1 calendar.
Hoping to compensate for some of its straight-line deficiencies, Scuderia Ferrari ran its F1-74 cars with lower downforce levels in the second free practice session, a test that eventually ended with Charles Leclerc crashing into the barriers:
“We were running maximum downforce at the end. We tried to reduce it in FP2 but then we went back to the maximum downforce, so we didn’t try to mitigate with the downforce level. But it is true that in terms of the turbo, it is maybe a little smaller but we are not as efficient or we didn’t have the capacity to run at maximum power.” – Scuderia Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto concluded.
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