Charles Leclerc started from pole at Monza, but the two-stop strategy failed and he finished second behind Max Verstappen. After the race, team leader Mattia Binotto stated that Red Bull Racing’s rivals were very fast today so Ferrari could put them in a serious fight.
Charles Leclerc’s team-mate Carlos Sainz recovered after starting from eighteenth and finishing fourth.
Mattia Binotto, team leader: “Honestly, I don’t think we could have acted differently today. We tried everything but Max had a fantastic race – he was very fast, his car’s tires didn’t deteriorate as fast as ours – they deserved to win.
Our initial strategy involved one stop – if it hadn’t been for the virtual safety car, Charles would have stayed on track. But when the yellow flags appeared, we thought it was right to change the strategy. We decided to make two pit stops so as not to follow the same strategy as Max, because we thought he would be faster under the same conditions.
Red Bull was also ready to make a pit stop and awaited our decision to do the opposite. Charles drove into the pits and switched to two pit stops, while Max stayed on the one-stop strategy. After all, Max was just faster.
We are a little disappointed that the race ended behind the safety car. This is not the best way to end the race – not only for us, but also for the fans. The FIA could have acted differently – it may not have been waiting for the cars on the track between the safety car and the leader to come back into the circle.
It was wrong to wait so long. After last year’s race in Abu Dhabi, we had long discussions and came to the conclusion that the race should be resumed as soon as it is safe to do so. Today was clearly a different case.”
Charles Leclerc (2nd): “Today I had a good pace, but we had a lot of bad luck with the virtual safety car. The mode was turned off just as I was leaving the pit lane on track after a pit stop.
We thought it was the right decision to switch to Medium tires – stopping during the virtual safety car should have given us an advantage, but unfortunately this mode was turned off too early and we didn’t get the full advantage we were counting on.
As for the situation in the last laps, I think the race could have resumed as Daniel Ricciardo’s car had already been removed. I was sure about the restart, but apparently there were some reasons for not restarting the race, which I don’t know.
Red Bull was very fast in the race, checking the condition of the rear tires well and not letting them overheat. But I think we can still win this season. The team is working on it – we played well in Monza after what happened in Spa. We must not forget that this track is not suitable for our car, but we still showed a good pace.
Carlos Sainz (4th): “This is probably my best race in terms of the number of positions recovered. At one point I was overtaking almost every lap – I’m happy with myself and I don’t think I could have done better.
It’s hard to say if we had a chance of winning today – you have to compare the pace of Max and Charles. In any case, the car turned out to be better than in the previous two races, we were able to load the tires more actively. I hope we can keep up the momentum and do better in the next Grand Prix. If Charles fought not only with Max today, but with me, Red Bull would be much harder to win.
Source: F1 News

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