Ferrari mistakes in Monaco explained
In a video posted on LinkedIn, sports director and chief strategy officer, Iñaki Rueda, claims that these are “two errors” which were committed in the pits by the Scuderia.
“With Carlos Sainz we realized very late in his lap that we couldn’t cover Pérez, with Charles we had a big lead and we thought we could cover Pérez. At the start of lap 18, Charles was more than ten seconds ahead of Pérez, and we thought that advantage would diminish because Pérez, on intermediate tires, was much faster than Charles on extremes.
We looked at the others, we had live data from the cars, and we thought that gap was going to go from ten seconds to five, four, three at worst. When Charles passed to the pool, the last timing reference indicated that he was going to appear a second in front of Pérez. What we didn’t expect was Pérez going nine seconds faster on this lap. Because of that, we lost the victory with Charles. »
A little later, Ferrari called its drivers to change their tyres, but a miscalculation by the strategists cost Charles Leclerc a little more time because he was too close to his teammate when diving into the pit lane.
“We tried at the last second to tell Charles to stay on track, but it was too late, he had already entered the pit lane. And during this stop, Charles lost two seconds. It was crucial. That’s what allowed Verstappen to come out ahead of Charles a lap later.”confirms Iñaki Rueda.
With these errors, Ferrari has lost ground on its rival in the championship since it is 36 points which separate these two teams. Instead of registering 43 units (28 + 18), only 30 points have been added to the counter.