Ferrari strategist breaks down Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz Monaco errors

Ferrari’s head of race strategy said two gap mistakes were to blame for Charles Leclerc sinking from P1 to P4 in his home Monaco Grand Prix.

The Monégasque’s home curse continued last week when he finished for the first time at the circuit, but in fourth having earned pole in qualifying.

While no one can blame Leclerc himself for the non-podium finish, plenty of fingers have been pointed at Ferrari who cost the 24-year-old the chance to win his home race.

Ferrari’s head of race strategy Inaki Rueda has now explained that they came undone when Sergio Perez lapped quicker than they had expected.

“With Charles, we made two mistakes. The first one was to cover Perez,” Rueda said, as reported by racer.com. “While with Carlos [Sainz] we realised very late in his lap that we could not cover Perez, with Charles we had a big gap and we thought we could cover Perez.

“At the start of his in-lap, Charles had over 10 seconds advantage on Perez, and we thought this advantage would shrink because Perez on the intermediate tyres was lapping much faster than Charles on the extreme (wet).

“We had looked at other people, we had the live data from the cars, and we though that this gap would shrink from around 10 seconds to maybe five, four, three seconds at worst.

“As we were coming in, we saw the 10 seconds gap shrinking: seven, six, five, four, as Charles was coming through the Swimming Pool. The last timing reference we had indicated that he would come out one second ahead of Perez.

“What we did not expect was Perez to go nine seconds faster overall on that lap. Because of this, we lost the race with Charles.”

Leclerc’s afternoon went from bad to worse when he dropped out of the podium places all together, again as a result of a Ferrari team decision.

“The second mistake we made with Charles was a gap mistake again,” Rueda said. “We wanted to pit both cars onto dry tyres. On Lap 21 we thought the track was good for dry tyres, and at the…