“Nice call, I liked it”. Charles Leclerc was the only driver in Q3 yesterday to hit the Brazilian track with intermediate tires unlike all his rivals, including his Maranello team-mate Carlos Sainz.
Laurent Mekies, Ferrari’s sporting director, explained the decision to divide the strategies as a result of forecasts that showed imminent rain. Realistically, the chances that this strategy decision would have actually rewarded Charles Leclerc were low, if not nonexistent. The Monegasque driver found himself on the track with a non-competitive tire and did not have time to mount the soft slicks as the rain immediately increased its intensity after the red flag shown for George Russell’s incident.
“We were expecting rain that never came”, Charles Leclerc’s outburst once he got out of the cockpit, an outburst that Timo Glock understands easily. “If I were Charles Leclerc I would go crazy” – said Timo Glock, who is also a commentator for Sky Sport Germany – “I would park the car on the track and say ‘you do it’ to the pitwall.” – he added.
“Ferrari proved to be a team in chaos in this Qualifying session. For me it is completely incomprehensible how it was possible to send poor Charles Leclerc on the track with the intermediates, it made sense if at that moment it was raining, but the track was dry and the rain was not already falling from the sky” – the former F1 driver pointed out.
Show your support for Scuderia Ferrari with official merchandise collection! Click here to enter the F1 online Store and shop securely! And also get your F1 tickets for every race with VIP hospitality and unparalleled insider access. Click here for the best offers to support Charles and Carlos from the track!
The comments of Timo Glock share yhe view of Damon Hill who defined this episode as an example to summarize the entire season for Scuderia Ferrari in terms of strategy calls. Especially towards Charles Leclerc, who has often made decisions that turned out to be completely wrong such as the choice of mounting hard tires in Hungary to defend the lead at track position level by not accepting the virtual overtaking of Max Verstappen who had carried out a second undercut mounting another set of medium tires. That Sunday Charles Leclerc finished in sixth position a race that, after a great overtaking on George Russell, was in the hands of the Monegasque before the unfortunate choice to use hard tires.
Timo Glock then congratulated Kevin Magnussen since as Gunther Steiner also reiterated yesterday, the Dane in Qualifying did not steal anything from anyone by taking a pole position with full merit and beating even world champion Max Verstappen due to a mistake made by the Red Bull driver at Turn 8: “This pole is not stolen. Magnussen was put on the track at the ideal moment, Kevin and Max Verstappen were both on track with the fresh soft Pirellis, both did excellent laps and Magnussen was the fastest of the two, therefore, maximum respect for him”, concluded Timo Glock.
Leave a Reply