Scuderia Ferrari picked up five points in the final Sprint of the season, thanks to a fifth place finish for Charles Leclerc and an eighth with Carlos Sainz. The Monegasque managed to move up two places, pulling off a great pass on Lewis Hamilton in the Mercedes, while the Spaniard managed to work his way up to finish in the points.
The race. As from this morning’s Shootout, the team decided to focus mainly on tomorrow’s race, at the expense of the Sprint, from the moment Leclerc opted not to use his last set of new Softs in Q3. So both SF-23s lined up on the grid with used Soft tyres with the far from easy aim of making them last to the end. They both got away well, overtaking the AlphaTauris ahead of them, Yuki Tsunoda in Charles’ case and Daniel Ricciardo for Carlos. For a while after that, it was a case of managing the car-tyre package given the very high track temperature (54 degrees at the start). Sainz had the more difficult afternoon, having to fight tooth and nail, while enjoying spectacular battles with Ricciardo and Oscar Piastri. Charles had a slightly easier time of it and in the closing laps that and his race management paid off as he was able to get ahead of Hamilton to secure fifth place.
71 laps tomorrow. The team has worked to ensure that the choices made today pay off in tomorrow’s race over 71 laps. Charles lines up on the front row alongside pole sitter Max Verstappen. Carlos will start from seventh place with George Russell next to him. The race gets underway at 14 local (18 CET).
Charles Leclerc #16
We did a good job today and there was not much more on the cards. Not using new tyres for qualifying, preferring to keep them for the GP on Sunday, we knew we would be on the back foot for the Sprint. We did well anyway, finishing in P5 and getting ahead of Lewis (Hamilton), who qualified on a new set of Softs this morning. They are our main competitors for this year so it’s a good sign to be able to fight with them.
Carlos Sainz #55
Today we suffered more than expected in the Sprint. Our main limitation came from having to manage the engine temperatures and the tyres. This implied a lot of lift and coast from very early on in the race, which obviously affected our overall performance. However, I'm confident that tomorrow it will be better and that we’ll be able to push the car and the tyres more to recover some positions.
Frédéric Vasseur, Team Principal
We decided to partially sacrifice today’s race, with a view to being in better shape for the Grand Prix, so we will have to wait and see if we have played our cards right. We didn’t use new tyres in this morning’s qualifying, so tomorrow Charles will have one set of new Softs, Carlos will have one that’s just done two laps and they will both have two sets of new Mediums. Therefore, I’d say that today overall, we got the best result we could have done, bringing home important points and that was mainly down to excellent tyre management and Charles’ pass on Lewis (Hamilton) towards the end. The good job this afternoon will be analysed carefully and we will try and be even better prepared for tomorrow when we start with Charles on the front row and Carlos all set to race aggressively.