Ferrari boss Mattia Binotto believes that the team made the right strategic decisions during the British GP.
Ferrari boss Mattia Binotto believes that the team made the right strategic decisions during the British GP.
Charles Leclerc was leading the race when the safety car came in because Esteban Ocon had stopped on the track. At that moment, his teammate Carlos Sainz made a pit-stop, as did the others who were in the top four.
Leclerc did not go in and was attacked by Sergio Perez and Lewis Hamilton on the restart. Both overtook him, while Sainz took his first Formula One victory and the Monegasque dropped to fourth.
Binotto explained that Ferrari was concerned about the risk of losing too much time by stopping their two cars at the same time, so they decided to call out only Sainz.
"What happened is that our two cars - in our opinion, certainly - were too close to come in at the same time, so we had to make a decision," Binotto told the media.
"We were the only ones with two cars fighting for the top spots. The other teams had only one, so the decisions are certainly much easier."
"In our case, we had both cars and we saw that there was not a sufficient gap for both to stop because the second one would have lost track time and positions."
The team chose Sainz for the pit-stop because it expected the soft tires to suffer more degradation, giving Leclerc a better chance in the final laps.
"Because his tires were newer compared to Carlos' - I think they had six or seven laps less and were in better shape," Binotto continued.
"And by stopping second, Carlos would protect us in the first few corners because we knew that re-starting with the hard ones would have been even more difficult. That was the reason for our decision."
"We also expected more degradation of the soft tires, meaning that Charles might have three or four difficult laps initially, but then he could recover. However, the soft did not degrade as we expected."
After the race, the cameras showed Binotto talking to Leclerc, who claimed that his boss simply wanted to cheer him up. The Italian admits that he understands Leclerc's disappointment.
"I knew he was disappointed and frustrated, which is understandable because he was leading the race comfortably," Binotto said.
"He was very fast when the safety car came in and it was a great opportunity in terms of the championship because Max (Verstappen) had some problems.
"Then the safety car came in and he had a tough finish to the race, he was definitely disappointed. I knew that when I met him."
"What I told him is that he again did a fantastic race, an incredible first lap with the battles and then also on the restart, his driving and position defense were extraordinary."
"So I simply told him to keep calm because his driving was fantastic. He was just unlucky again."
Despite Leclerc's frustration, Binotto feels that Ferrari made the right decisions in the race.
"I believe the decisions we made were correct and appropriate at all times," he said.
Binotto acknowledges that the only questionable one is whether Leclerc should have stopped during the safety car, but he is not convinced that this would have helped the driver gain positions.
"Would he have recovered the position? I'm not sure. In retrospect, I think it's always easy to say that we could have done things differently."
"Yes, once again we had a safety car at the wrong moment when we were comfortably leading the race."