Mattia Binotto explains the team orders situation in F1 Mexico GP as Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc share their views as well.
It was a dream start for the Ferrari duo in F1 Mexico GP where their immediate rivals McLaren struggled at the start. With Leclerc in fifth and Sainz in seventh, it was the best they could have hoped for when the race was neutralised behind the safety car.
Sainz did lose out due to the incident ahead but Leclerc was lucky enough to get by unharmed. While the Monegasque chased AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly, the Spaniard joined his teammate after clearing Alfa Romeo’s Antonio Giovinazzi early on.
Ferrari opted to stop Leclerc early but Gasly followed him on the next lap to maintain the status quo. It was then for the team to use Sainz in a way that he went longer on his first stint, so that he could catch the Frenchman towards the end of the grand prix.
Once Sainz went longer, it was certain that they will need to deploy team orders. There was no point to pit Leclerc and lose him more time and so they went ahead with it with about 10-12 laps to go. It was complicated with the lapped cars around.
But Sainz eventually got through and cut down the gap from about 12s to 7s. However, it was the most he could do with Gasly also upping his pace slightly. With no hope, Ferrari switched back as promised where the Spaniard had to slow down for Leclerc.
It was about 7s gap that he had built on him but he slowed enough on the final lap to let him through as they finished fifth and sixth to overtake McLaren by 13.5 points in the standings. Post-race, Binotto explained it was a planned scenario.
Team spirit, planned swap:
Binotto: “It’s a scenario we discussed this morning during our usual strategy meeting. We knew that at some stage in the race, maybe because we somehow made a different strategy between the two – one stopping early, the other one staying longer on track and the one staying longer with a tyre disadvantage by the end of the race. So we knew that it could have been maybe an opportunity to try to catch up to the driver ahead, who was Gasly. We discussed the point that okay, the guy stopping earlier is not the best time to stop but doing that, Gasly stopped immediately after and then we tried to stay longer and somehow have a chance by the end of the race.
“But that was on paper, and we said by doing that, we would have given an advantage to one of the two drivers. So we stopped with the intention to try to catch up Gasly and then swap back if that would not have worked and we did it. So I think it has been a good team spirit, it has been a good – let me say – team effort. It has been, in the collaboration of the two drivers, great – the way it has been managed. It’s not easy when you are six, seven seconds ahead, we need to slow down so much to swap again to give back the position. But the best thing is that they both understand the situation at the moment. So we tried whatever we could try to catch up Gasly. But when we realised it would not have been possible, we simply kept the initial positions.”
Whoever in front, his strategy:
Binotto: “It was the one that we decided to stop initially because it was the lead car between the two cars, who was closer to Gasly, so by stopping him we knew that somehow Gasly would stop as well to protect, a couple of laps or one lap after, and that was the intention.”
Sainz and Leclerc:
Swap decision, useful for future:
Sainz: “Basically, lets go back to when Charles pitted on Lap 34 and Gasly pit with him to cover, then I managed to extend and obviously I went to hard tyres much later with a fresher hard and I started catching Charles back up. He lets me by to go and catch Gasly and there was the other possibility that we could have actually fought for position but fighting for position would have made us lost a lot of lap time to driver ahead of us and the target was to give myself a chance to go and catch Gasly.
“So Charles let me by and I go and try catch Gasly, I felt short and then I gave back the position to Charles. I think we’ve seen this to many other teams. What is important is that we get confident as a team to do it out of respect of the team orders, because it will happen later this season or in the following years to come, we might be in a similar situation, so as teammates and the whole team, we need to get comfortable with switching positions on track like we’ve done at other races. I think today as a team we executed nicely.”
More laps would have been better:
Sainz: “It is a tricky question, obviously the situation because right when I caught Charles, he is also lapping a Williams and a Alpine and the situation gets a bit trickier and a bit messy, because obviously he’s been told to let me by but at the same time, he’s trying to clear the blue flags. And yes, I am not going to lie that I lost two or three seconds and as a team maybe we need to look at it how to improve it in the next time but it is very tricky, positions swaps are probably the most tricky bit in F1 and this time we got it fairly right, yes, I lost a bit of time there but we will try to see what we could have done different and learn for the next one.”
Tough to give up:
Leclerc: “I mean, it was actually a scenario we already discussed before the race and so it was all clear. Before the race, it would have been the other way around but because of that I was lucky with the start, Carlos a bit unlucky, so personally I knew that stopping that early will compromise my race quite a bit because it would have been really difficult to go on this hard compound, but that was the only chance for us as a team to try and catch Gasly because if we were pitting that would have pushed Pierre to box too and Carlos to have the tyre advantage to overtake at the end, so we gave it a shot but we didn’t manage it at the end.”
Why the delay:
Leclerc: “I was okay with it, basically I had a very tough time with the hard in the first lap, with the things I was complaining on the radio, and then as Carlos mentioned, as soon as I was asked to let him by, I had traffic and I had to go by them, I think it was Russell and Stroll, so the two cars held up. So, we waited one lap and in that lap when it was clear, we gained one second and so the team told me ‘stand by, don’t give the position’ and then basically two laps later, they asked me to give it and I gave it.”
Here’s Ferrari taking in two new drivers