Ferrari blamed lapped cars for costing both their drivers vital time during Sunday’s Monaco Grand Prix, which helped Sergio Perez beat them to victory.
After his sole pit stop of the day Carlos Sainz Jnr spent half a lap behind Nicholas Latifi, which he said cost him a position to Perez. Charles Leclerc, in the other Ferrari, was also held up behind Latifi’s team mate Alexander Albon.
The delays were a particular source of aggravation for Ferrari as the team collected a heavy fine on Saturday when Sainz held up Lance Stroll during final practice. The stewards came down heavily on the team, saying they gave Sainz “a series of grossly incorrect messages, by radio, about the gaps to the cars behind” about his gaps to drivers behind.
Ferrari warned Sainz he was being caught by Yuki Tsunoda. However the situation was complicated when Tsunoda unexpectedly told his team he needed to pit, apparently due to a car problem. As Sainz slowed approaching the final corner to let him by, Tsunoda dived into the pits, and Sainz moved back to the racing line as Stroll appeared behind him.
The stewards described the incident as “unacceptable”. However team principal Mattia Binotto said the team “did our best” to avoid holding anyone up and did not agree with the stewards’ decision.
“We believe that the impeding he made was certainly not dangerous,” he said in response to a question from RaceFans. “We [were] not too happy for the fine.
“We believe it was not the right choice because we believes that as a team and driver we did our best in order to avoid it at the time and not making anything wrong. So overall, we need to accept those decisions [but it] doesn’t mean we agree with them.”
He noted that in the race “solid blue flags” were shown to Albon and Latifi, both of which delayed his drivers “and no further actions” were taken.
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