30/05/2023
NEWS STORY
Not for the first time Ferrari's strategy has been called into question, as Carlos Sainz says the team made the wrong call in pitting him too early.
As early clash with Ocon as they battled for position saw the Spaniard incur damage to his front wing, and while Ferrari prepared for him to stop he opted to continue.
Over the course of the following laps the Ferrari crew headed into the pitlane on several occasions, though it wasn't clear if this was due to miscommunications with Sainz or an attempt to force Ocon into an early stop.
Finally, the Spaniard was ordered to pit on Lap 33 while running 4th, after Hamilton and Ocon had pitted on the preceding laps. However, Sainz was unhappy, feeling that the damage to his front wing wasn't costing him pace and that his hards were still good for a longer opening stint.
Once again, Sainz found himself behind Ocon, despite a slow stop for the Alpine driver.
"What the f***! This is exactly what I talked about," shouted Sainz over the radio.
Told that his job was to cover Hamilton, the Spaniard replied: "I don’t care about Hamilton, I was quick."
"We had a bit of an eventful race always chasing Ocon and on the gearbox of Ocon," he said at race end. "I saved my tyres well, the hard tyres, and it looked like he had a slow pitstop and I was flying on the in-lap and we decided to go for the overcut.
"Probably, given the pace I was showing, maybe we could've been a bit more patient but it's how it is."
At the time the rain began to fall Sainz was running fifth, moving up to third when Russell and Ocon pitted, but after making his own stop the Spaniard had dropped to eighth.
"Monaco, first of all is a bit of a lottery," he said, "and today was a bit of a lottery for everyone, probably I just got the worst out of it.
"The first pitstop is debatable," he insisted, "I will go back and review because obviously I was very quick on the in-lap and felt like I still had a lot more lap time to come in clean air. I had been doing all that management, to suddenly pit, it left me frustrated.
"But I shouldn't have showed it on the radio," he admitted, "first of all, always due to frustration and then the second pitstop, as I said before, it's a lottery. It's not getting it right or wrong it was one lap too early, one lap too late."
"I think it was a good strategy," argued team boss, Frederic Vasseur, "because when we asked him to pit it was to avoid losing a position against Hamilton.
"Positions are key on this track," he added. "It would have been better to extend if we were not at risk from Hamilton, but in this situation I think it was the good call.
"At one stage we had to cover the other ones on track to avoid losing position," said the Frenchman, "and it's always easy to redo the race after 5:30 and say 'okay, if you extend the stint then you can change the tyres when it's raining'. But we didn't know at this stage, and we were in the situation to lose positions compared to our competitors."
Referring to the fact that both cars were called in after the majority of the others had switched to Inters or wets, Vasseur said: "We were expecting that the track wouldn't be so wet and that if you don't have to put the wets, that we could have finished on the podium.
"It was the gamble for us," he admitted, "the risk was not too high because we didn't lose position. But it is like it is. We knew perfectly on the grid that if we want to achieve something, we have to take risks. I'm not disappointed at all with the risks that we took."
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