Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc finished fourth and sixth in Austin. After the finish, the Ferrari drivers were in the opposite mood: if Carlos was convinced that he lost less than five seconds to Lando Norris at the finish, Charles, who started from pole, expressed his dissatisfaction with the strategy for which the team had chosen. it.
Carlos Sainz (4th): “Lando was struggling in the last laps, so I was gaining about a second per lap from him. If you had told me yesterday that I would finish four seconds behind Lando, I would have been happy given the pace shown in the sprint. We did a great job in the race, I controlled the pace and tire wear. I’m quite satisfied with the result.
I overtook Lewis, but he was very fast and practically flew around the track, so he overtook me without any problems. But I had a good start and was in control of the tires the whole race, which was great.
It will be difficult for us to stay ahead of Mercedes in the constructors’ championship, but they can, for example, retire and there will be another stage with a sprint ahead. Points are awarded on Sunday and compared to them we have race pace issues. Something has to happen.”
Charles Leclerc (6th): “It’s very clear that our strategy was different from everyone else’s, and that didn’t help. At first I didn’t understand why I was asked to let Carlos go first, because I didn’t know he was under pressure from Sergio Perez. But then I realized, so no problem, but I needed an explanation.
We talk a lot about strategy. We’ve had some good races this season, but there have also been races where we haven’t had the best strategy. The main problem is that when the car has no speed, no matter what strategy we choose, it will still look bad.
I was slow on the hard tires, but that is easy to judge after the finish. Austin was one of those races where the strategy was wrong. We need to understand why, because our calculations showed that there was virtually no difference between the one and two pit stop strategies.”
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
