Ferrari good pace, but Charles always blocked
The two Ferrari cars finished in fifth and eighth place with Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc having two races both good but completely different from each other in Austria.
On the one hand, Carlos Sainz, after starting on hard tires, suffers significantly in the first laps, but he holds out and manages the tyres to take them to almost 50 laps. The last stint with the mediums is an awesome one for Carlos and gives him fifth place at the end of the race. The average of the second stint and the second overall time on the fastest lap are good signs, but partly altered by a contingent situation all in favor of these numbers, as Carlos Sainz is the only driver on the track on medium tires (apart from Kimi Raikkonen), used during the last stint and with a very light car.
Charles Leclerc has to do an attacking race, but after initially passing Sergio Perez he comes out of the pit stops behind the Red Bull driver and is no longer able to show the real pace of the SF21, with Daniel Ricciardo who, as mentioned, was almost impossible to overtake and blocked everyone behind him. The only real flaw of Charles Leclerc’s race is probably having lost the position from Daniel Ricciardo on the first lap after the Safety Car, and perhaps the only weakness that the Monegasque now has in the race situations is exactly when he starts again after the Saftey Car leaves the track, given that on more than one occasion we have seen him being overtaken in such situations.
However, Ferrari also appeared good on the race pace despite the lower load on the car, probably compensated by a correct mechanical set-up, even if it is difficult to judge the tire degradation given that Charles Leclerc, the only one of the two Ferrari drivers to have a strategy aligned with the other teams, was unable to express his pace for most of the race.
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