“If clarifications are needed between Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz? Absolutely not, Carlos was very good and in the first stint of the race he was covering Charles’s back allowing him to create a gap, as we had established ”. These comments of the Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto were enough to dismantle any clumsy attempt to identify Carlos Sainz as potentially responsible for the strategic error in the Monaco Grand Prix. Several media outlets reported that Carlos did not want to follow the Maranello team’s instructions at the first pit stop, when he was asked to cover Sergio Perez’s stop, which is completely untrue,
Ferrari’s poor strategy decisions eventually led to Charles Leclerc going from the lead to fourth place due to two wrong strategic choices independent of Carlos Sainz’s opinion of switching directly to dry tires, a decision that in hindsight was the correct one, as admitted by Mattia Binotto at a press conference.
Inaki Rueda explained in detail everything that did not work for Ferrari from this point of view, confirming that at the last second Carlos Sainz was given the order to continue without returning to the pits to cover Sergio Perez’s stop. The mistake was trying to do it with Charles Leclerc, therefore underestimating Sergio Perez’s speed with the intermediate tires in that stage.
The entourage of Carlos Sainz is at work to prevent the Spaniard from incorrectly being portraited as the bad guy, passing precisely as a ‘selfish’ driver who is not very willing to be a team player, as suggested, for example, by Italian journalist Giorgio Terruzzi.
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It is therefore not surprising that an apology has arrived from Giorgio Terruzzi following his statements published on Monday in Corriere della Sera. “In the heat, in that confused finale, I thought it was that sort of desertion that triggered the Ferrari strategic blackout. A total blunder. The one I took, of course, because, analyzing the race and asking the protagonists, I understood, unfortunately late, that Carlos Sainz had no responsibility whatsoever. Indeed, and perhaps, Carlos himself had seen better than others – writes Terruzzi – even Red Bull, as a neutral party confessed to me, must have made a strategic mistake thinking of applying a strategy to the advantage of Verstappen and not of Perez. If there is a driver who has understood his value and the value of his team, it is Carlos. Who is perfectly clear on his role, for this year at least, as demonstrated by the rest of the race in Monte Carlo. I knew. I forgot it” – Italian journalist Giorgio Terruzzi admitted.
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