Carlos Sainz perhaps described today’s race best, almost like a glass half-empty rather than half-full, as they had hoped for more from the Las Vegas weekend. While the struggles with single-lap pace had been anticipated beforehand, there was an expectation of being able to fight for the victory in the race, especially considering that both Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc had secured spots in the top two rows of the grid.
However, those hopes faded after just a few laps when it became clear that Russell had the pace to pull away, creating a safety margin ahead of when he would switch to hard tires—one of the real unknowns, since it hadn’t been tested on Friday in order to keep the two sets for the race.
Even though Charles Leclerc tried to apply pressure to the Brit in the early laps after taking second place from his teammate at the start, pushing the tire too hard caused graining issues. The Monegasque lost pace and was eventually overtaken by Carlos Sainz, who moved back into second. At that point, however, Russell was already well ahead, and the only hope was to have a much better pace on the hard tire, capable of turning the situation around, especially since Max Verstappen had also become a threat on the medium tires.
Indeed, before his pit stop, when Ferrari tried to extend Carlos Sainz’s stint on the mediums to take advantage in the second half of the race, the Spaniard was overtaken by Verstappen, dropping to third: “It was a difficult race, especially in the first stint with the mediums. At the end of that stint, we were losing around two seconds per lap. But overall, the pace on the hards was good. The problem was that we lost too much at the start,” Fred Vasseur said to Sky Italia after the race.
“At the beginning, we wanted to extend Carlos’ stint, so we discussed keeping him out on track and then we decided to pit. But I think it was a tough race for the drivers; they’re under a lot of pressure in those conditions, losing many seconds on track because of the graining,” Fred Vasseur explained to Sky Italia after the race.
In fact, by the end of the first stint, Carlos Sainz was losing a lot of time due to tire difficulties, so Ferrari had no choice but to stop him and release him into traffic, a situation far from ideal as it added stress on the tires during such a delicate phase. It’s no surprise that Carlos Sainz himself struggled during that stint.
In the end, Ferrari lost second place to Lewis Hamilton, who had a faster pace and was difficult to defend against, despite starting from the fifth row after qualifying mistakes. However, Ferrari did manage to recover on Verstappen during the final part of the race with a second set of hard tires. This small consolation allowed Ferrari to keep its Constructors’ Championship hopes alive against McLaren, which had a quiet weekend in Las Vegas.
However, it is clear that expectations were much higher, as Ferrari knows that Qatar could be a track more suited to McLaren’s MCL38 and more challenging for the SF-24, making it harder to close the gap with just two races to go. Fred Vasseur described the Las Vegas race as a damage-limiting exercise, achieving the best result against a superior Mercedes, but he is also aware that the goal was to do more and not settle: “Yes, we limited the damage, but we needed to score more points than the others and not just settle for limiting the damage. Okay, we scored 12 points more than McLaren, 15 more than Red Bull. But that’s the maximum we could do today, because Mercedes was flying. We’ll see next week.”
Nevertheless, the Constructors’ Championship goal remains within reach: “The Constructors’ title is definitely possible. Let’s focus on the next race, which will also have a sprint race. On paper, it’s not the best track for us, but we’ll see what we can do. We need to do the best we can and focus on ourselves. Today, the pace was inconsistent, with some good stints and others less so. We need to do a better job next week.” – the French manager concluded at the end of the Las Vegas Grand Prix.
