After Carlos Sainz’s slow pit stop at the Circuit of the Americas during the 2021 United States Grand Prix, a tyre change that lasted over five seconds, Scuderia Ferrari Team Principal Mattia Binotto acknowledged that the pit stops are proving to be Ferrari’s “Achilles heel” of the current season, as the mistake occurred in a “crucial moment” in which the Maranello team was attempting the undercut to overtake McLaren’s Daniel Ricciardo. The hesitation of the mechanics effectively put an end to the race of the Spaniard, who aspired to fifth place in his fight with the Australian, but in the end he had to settle for seventh place, being passed by Valtteri Bottas. The 4-point difference between fifth and seventh place would have given a different meaning to the fight for third place in the constructors’ standings, where McLaren now leads Scuderia Ferrari by 3.5 points.
And from Spain, national daily sport newspaper Marca did not go light on the Italian side, titling in its online edition: “The umpteenth time that Ferrari apologizes to Sainz”, and continuing the article they make a calculation of the misfortunes in the pits of the 27 year old Spanish driver:
“It rains in the wet on Ferrari’s disastrous stops. Lately Carlos Sainz has been suffering the impossible at every stop, and he is certainly the most penalized by the team in this respect. In Austin he had to suffer another unfortunate stop, this time of 5.6 seconds. The list of problems he encountered during the tire change is already long: at Silverstone it was 12.3 seconds, in Hungary 3.8, in Turkey 8.1. In Istanbul there was a problem with the manual light signal. For what happened, Mattia Binotto again apologized to Carlos.” – the Spanish daily sport newspaper concluded.
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