Different strategies, same result

The Spanish Grand Prix was not particularly rewarding for Scuderia Ferrari HP. Charles Leclerc, Carlos Sainz and the team tried to move up the order, adopting different strategies in terms of the tyre choices, but it wasn’t enough to move forward from the fifth and sixth places they had occupied on the grid. The team leaves Barcelona with a further 18 points, still second in the Constructors’ championship, aware that it needs to make progress in qualifying in order to start further up the grid, given that the gaps between the front runners are very close, which means it’s hard to overtake and gain places on Sunday.

The race. Charles and Carlos started on new Soft tyres, hoping to have the edge over the Mercedes who started on used ones, but off the line they were unable to get ahead, running fifth and sixth, even if the Spaniard soon got ahead of his team-mate. Sainz was the first of the Ferraris to pit, switching to Medium tyres on lap 15, while Leclerc stayed out, running an acceptable pace up until lap 21. At the second stop, the teams therefore split the strategies: Carlos came in on lap 36 fitting a set of new Hards, while once again, Charles prolonged his stint which meant he could risk running a set of Softs to the end of the race. Sainz therefore let Leclerc past on lap 55, the Monegasque then setting off in pursuit of George Russell, to try and snatch fourth place. He caught up with the Mercedes driver on the last lap, but it was too late to try an overtaking move, which would have been on the cards if only the race had been one lap longer.

Second of three. In the coming days, all the data from this event will be analysed so that the team can prepare for next weekend’s second race in this triple-header, the Austrian Grand Prix at the Spielberg circuit, which also sees the return of the Sprint format.

Charles Leclerc #16

It was tight today and we were just a lap short of fighting for P4, but our competitors were still ahead in terms of pace. Regarding our strategy, I think we did well to offset ourselves from the cars around us. We maybe lost some time between our two cars at the beginning of the race, but going forward we will focus on our race pace extracting the maximum from our package at the next race.

Carlos Sainz #55

It was a difficult race but we gave it our best. Stopping early and finishing the race on the Hard tyre didn’t turn out to be the optimal strategy today, but we only know this with hindsight after the chequered flag. In any case, we were lacking a bit of pace this weekend in general and we need to work to improve for next weekend in Austria. A massive thank you goes to every single fan that came to the track today and also to those who followed and supported us from home. A home race for a driver is always special and Barcelona is no exception for me.

Fred Vasseur
Team Principal Scuderia Ferrari HP

We started five and six and ended five and six and the conclusion I draw from this is that we must do a better job in qualifying. We need to make a small step forward so that we don’t start behind, as this pushes you into taking risks with the strategy. Yesterday the gap to those in front was about two tenths, today it was similar and if you look at it over the race distance then that was still the same gap. As for the contact between our drivers, it was very light and I don’t think it cost us anything. What cost us more is that after our stops, we came out behind some cars, it was very tight and we lost two or three seconds. With Carlos we wanted to cover Russell, which is why we had to go Medium-Hard as we pitted earlier. With Charles the plan was to extend the stint to go a bit longer which is why we were able to try the Softs. With such small gaps between the teams, everything can change: there are four teams in two to two and a half tenths so from track to track the pecking order can change. Next week we race in Austria where we will have another Sprint and I expect the track layout there will suit us better.