Charles Leclerc takes the blame on himself for F1 Brazil GP showing, as Carlos Sainz expands on his drop in a difficult outing.
After two weekends of strong run and victories for Ferrari, the F1 Brazil GP weekend was a salvage job, especially for Leclerc, who was the lone car remaining to score against two McLaren cars. Having crashed out in Q2, Sainz had another one in the grand prix albeit in difficult conditions.
Elaborating on Leclerc first, the Monegasque made a decent start and hung on the tail of Yuki Tsunoda and Esteban Ocon in the early part in the fight for third. He had Max Verstappen – again – to counter, but before it could get heated, the Monegasque pitted rather early to drop behind.
He wanted free air to showcase his pace, but to his unfortunate luck, he came out behind Oliver Bearman and Lewis Hamilton, which set him back. Team boss Frederic Vasseur noted that they lost out in pit exit where they didn’t account how slippery the track would be.
Leclerc then made couple of places on Tsunoda and Lando Norris, which helped him to end up fifth and register handy points against McLaren. Post-race, the Monegasque took the blame on himself with regards to the set-up choice, which he thinks set him back after the sprint.
“I think I’m partly to blame, because we decided on set-ups together with the team and today I wanted to go into that direction,” said Leclerc. “However, it was the wrong route for sure. Today, the pace was just not there. It was in qualifying, we’re happy, in qualifying, we actually weren’t too bad. With the new tyres, low fuel, you can extract more out of the car, but in the race we were nowhere.
“More than being nowhere, it was extremely difficult to drive, extremely difficult to not do any mistakes. At the end, looking at all this, the only thing we could be a little bit satisfied of is being in front of the two McLarens. To only lose four points in the Constructors is a big damage limitation on the weekend where they seem to be so strong.
“So yeah, now we need to put everything together for the last three races. That [pit-stop] was a mistake. It needs to be said as well that on a race like this, it’s very difficult to not do any mistakes in terms of strategy, because there are so many calls that you need to do. And if you look, I think only the top three did no mistakes on a race like this.
“We were on the other side of things, we stopped. I wanted free air, so I asked the team to find free air. They boxed me that lap, but unfortunately the pitstop – not the pit stop, but the pit entry and the pit exit time in the wet was a lot longer than what we thought. I ended up in the middle of traffic with Ollie and Lewis, and from that moment I knew that we were losing so much.
“There was a Safety Car we lost like three, four positions there, so then we lost more,” summed up Leclerc. His teammate Sainz ran mostly outside the points coming through the grid from the pitlane. He was forced to take all-new power unit elements after his crash and didn’t look comfortable at all.
In fact, he noted that he has had issues in wet conditions and it was evident the first time he drove the 2024 car. “Oh, just two very strange, unfortunate crashes, a bit of a nightmare day,” said Sainz. “Honestly, the two of them, there was no sign of me crashing, so I couldn’t do anything to avoid them.
“But at the same time, it was not easy out there to overtake, so starting from the pit lane, it was always going to be difficult to make it to the points. So, apologies to the whole team for the two crashes. I hope we can come back stronger. Unfortunately this year…I’ve always been a very strong driver in the wet, but for some reason, ever since I tried this car in the wet this year, I’ve never had a good feeling with it.
“I don’t know if we just don’t put energy into the tyres, we run it too steep in medium-to-high speed or what it is, but it’s clear that it’s very unpredictable and very difficult to drive. I am glad Charles brought it home in P5, I heard he was also struggling out there, so honestly, a bit of a nightmare the whole race, but hopefully some dry races coming and we will try and go for it,” summed up Sainz, who found support from Vasseur after the race.
The Frenchman stated that he knows the Spaniard will bounce back strongly in Las Vegas. In terms of the grand prix, Vasseur didn’t wish to put the set-up blame on Leclerc. He conceded that the track was probably on the tougher side for Ferrari, but he was pleased that they they didn’t lose as many points to McLaren.
“He [Leclerc] is always the first to blame himself,” said Vasseur to media. “But I’m not so sure he’s responsible for the set-up. It was a difficult Sunday, but overall it was not as dramatic weekend. It was more on some choices that was difficult to anticipate. Even the pit stop as well, at the end of the day if you stay on track, you are waiting for the red flag, it is the right call.
“But if you crash, it will look stupid. Honestly, this kind of weekend is quite difficult to manage from the pit wall and from the car. It was more the pace than the set-up, that was problematic because the pace was really difficult, around 6-7 tenths slower than Norris at the beginning of the stint, probably 6-7 tenths faster than him at the end of the stint.
“Regarding the pit stop, we underestimated the time loss on the pit exit, which was very-very slippery and we lost a couple of tenths which was enough to lose the position. But I don’t think, in the race it was the game changer because at the end, we would have pit the lap after under the VSC.
“The game changer on the strategy was to stay on track and wait for the red flag. We knew that the track will probably be difficult, probably much more for than McLaren and at the end on the weekend, we didn’t lose so much point. I don’t want to lose, we have to score points and make better weekends than this.
“It is not a drama and we will have probably much better race in Las Vegas, that’s where we have to score the big one. It was not the best one for us [overall]. It is very difficult to predict because we are speaking about plus or minus, like one or two tenths and it is a better offset, management of the tyres and is very-very close but it was not too dry to understand,” summed up Vasseur.
Here’s how F1 Brazil GP panned out
Here’s how F1 Brazil GP sprint panned out
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