Ferrari defends Charles Leclerc’s British GP strategy

SILVERSTONE, England — Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto has defended his team’s strategy at the British Grand Prix after giving multiple reasons for the decision not to pit Charles Leclerc under a late Safety Car.

Leclerc was leading the British Grand Prix when a Safety Car was called on Lap 39 for Esteban Ocon stopping his Alpine car on track.

Ferrari had time to call Leclerc into the pits, but instead opted to keep him out on track while pitting teammate Carlos Sainz, who was running in second place.

By opting against pitting Leclerc, it meant he was on much older tyres than his rivals at the restart and he ultimately lost places to Sainz, Hamilton and Sergio Perez, who had all stopped for fresh tyres under the Safety Car.

When Ferrari told Leclerc to stay out there was a nine second gap to Sainz at Safety Car speeds, which should have been enough to clear him from the pit box before Sainz came in. However, Ferrari’s strategists believed it was not possible to complete pit stops on both cars on the same lap and therefore told Leclerc to stay out.

“What happened was our two cars were too close to stop both of them, so we had to take a decision [on which one to stop],” Binotto explained. “We were the only one with two cars fighting for the good positions, the other teams had one car and certainly the decisions are a lot easier.

“In our case we had the two cars and there was not a sufficient gap to stop both of them because the second would have lost time at the pit stop and fallen back.

“So why then by deciding to stop one did we stop Carlos? Because Charles had the track position and was leading, so he would have remained the leader of the race. Because his tyres were fresher than the ones of Carlos had [before the Safety Car period], I think six or seven laps less than the ones of Carlos had and in better shape.

“And Carlos by stopping and still being second, he would have stopped the others, at least in the first couple of corners when we knew starting on the hard [compound tyre] would be the most difficult. So that was the reason we decided. And then we were hoping for more tyre degradation on the soft to give Charles maybe a difficult three or four laps initially but recovering later on, but the soft didn’t degrade as we were hoping.”

Asked how he reacted to those saying Ferrari threw away a chance for Leclerc to slash the gap to title rival Max Verstappen in the standings, Binotto said: “What would they have done then differently?

“I think the…