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Ferrari: Took the worst tires we had

Jeffrey Gooding

Ferrari’s tactic for the Brazilian sprint was to deliberately take bad tires to be in a better position for Sunday – Sainz: Never so much lift & Coast

Ferrari basically abandoned the Formula 1 sprint in Brazil in order to have a better chance in Sunday’s race. “We took the worst tires we had available and we saved the good ones for tomorrow,” reveals Carlos Sainz. “Hopefully that will help a little. “

However, the Spaniard sees little chance if you have to do as much lift & coast on Sunday as in the sprint. “I’ve never done as much lift & coast as I did today,” says Sainz, who therefore didn’t really enjoy the race. “We couldn’t really push at any time.”

This is because the temperatures of around 28 degrees Celsius really got to Ferrari. “The temperatures surprised us,” he admits. “But we expect it to be cooler tomorrow.” Then it should only be around 20 degrees Celsius, which should help the problems somewhat.

However, it was only enough for Ferrari to finish fifth and eighth in the sprint. Sainz in particular had major problems and had to fight off Daniel Ricciardo’s AlphaTauri pretty hard. He even let the Australian past, only to overtake him again with DRS on the back straight.

“That was my only chance to keep my position because Daniel was much faster on the new softs,” he says. “I had to do so much lift & coast that I couldn’t even push on the brakes, so I had to make sure I had DRS to at least be fast on the straights. “

Teammate Charles Leclerc also had similar problems and also had to take his foot off the gas early “basically in every corner”. “It’s always been the case that we’ve had slightly bigger problems with overheating in hotter races. I’ve had to deal with it for the last few years.”

“The cars are simply so fast now that you just have to do these laps,” said the Monegasque. “Nevertheless, it was worse today than it has ever been this year. “

Attack on Verstappen at the start

But Leclerc is expecting things to improve on Sunday – partly because the temperatures are expected to drop and partly because he will start from the front row of the grid and won’t have so many cars in front of him.

Max Verstappen showed him today how to take the lead from second place on the grid. Of course, that is also Leclerc’s goal for tomorrow, but he knows that it is actually a wasted effort. “I watched the last lap of myself and Max,” he says.

“My lap was pretty good and I was nine tenths off the pace. If that’s the pace, then I’m sure even if I overtake him, it’s a bit irrelevant because he’ll overtake me again after two or three laps anyway,” said the Ferrari driver, who still wants to seize the opportunity should it arise.

“But I will focus on my own race. Our main focus is on beating Mercedes in the constructors’ championship.” Incidentally, this was only half successful in the sprint. Although Leclerc was able to overtake Lewis Hamilton, George Russell finished just ahead of him

Race pace against Mercedes “not so bad “

Nevertheless, it was noticeable that Mercedes had surprisingly severe problems with the tires – more so than Ferrari. “The race pace wasn’t that bad if we compare it with Mercedes,” nods Leclerc.

But: “If we compare it with McLaren, then Lando was extremely fast, and Red Bull was also extremely fast. We have a lot of work to do in terms of race pace because we are missing something. And I don’t quite understand what it is,” he says. “We’re close in qualifying, but so far away in the race. “

What encourages him for the race, however, is the good sprint pace of Yuki Tsunoda, who finished sixth behind Leclerc. The Japanese driver had started on fresh softs, some of which Ferrari had kept for the Grand Prix. “We expected them not to have the same pace as us, but on the new soft he was close to our pace,” he says.

Ferrari’s tactic of contesting the sprint with old tires was therefore “a good decision.”

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