Scuderia Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur provided insight into the Maranello team’s decision not to immediately retire Carlos Sainz from the Belgian Grand Prix, despite significant damage suffered by his SF-23 car.
Immediately after the race start at the 7.004-kilometre Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps in Stavelot, Carlos Sainz found himself entangled in a first-corner incident, where he maneuvered to avoid colliding with Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes as they approached La Source. Unfortunately, this resulted in squeezing McLaren’s Oscar Piastri against the inside wall, leading to a heavy collision that promptly ended the Australian driver’s race as he couldn’t return to the pits.
Struggling with his impaired car, the Ferrari man made a pit stop at the end of Lap 7 to switch to fresh tires, but his performance failed to make a significant impact on the race due to the incident with the McLaren car. Eventually, on Lap 23, Ferrari decided to withdraw him, citing extensive damage that rendered his car unsuitable to continue.
In an interview with reporters at the end of the Belgian Grand Prix, team principal Frederic Vasseur revealed that the extent of damage on the right-hand side of Carlos Sainz’s SF-23 single-seater caused him to lose “a lot” of lap time.
“Laptime, no, because it’s quite difficult because you’re losing downforce,” – the French manager pointed out when asked about the estimated lap time loss for the Spaniard – “But it’s not just the downforce, it is the balance of the car. We never did the calculation of a potential lap time with [the affected] points of downforce and [affected] balance. But it was a lot.” – he added.
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The Ferrari boss admitted that the call to leave Carlos Sainz on track was in fact a longshot gamble on a possible red flag situation, given that rain was forecasted. A red flag moment would have given the Maranello team the possibility of fixing the SF-23 car of the Spanish driver: “We were just expecting a red flag at one stage to be able to fix it,” he said. But with the first [rain] shower… when the shower came without the red flag, we decided to stop it.” – Frederic Vasseur explained at the end of the Belgian Grand Prix, the last race before the summer break.
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