Russian GP | Ferrari's Dilemma; Disagreement or Mismanagement?
Lewis Hamilton clinched the victory from the Ferraris.
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Lewis Hamilton won the Russian Grand Prix after a virtual safety car cost Ferrari's Charles Leclerc the lead.
There was an agreement between Sebastian Vettel and his teammate Charles Leclerc, It looks that the plan has gone wrong as he didn't accept the order to let Charles Leclerc by.
There was an agreement between Sebastian Vettel and his teammate Charles Leclerc, It looks that the plan has gone wrong as he didn't accept the order to let Charles Leclerc by.
We saw that Sebastian Vettel was lapping much faster than Charles Leclerc after that powerful slipstream from the poleman at the start to pass the Monegasque into Turn 2, so we can understand why he didn't want to swap earlier. Something we can say much more like self-esteem.
Binotto said: “We agreed together that the best way was not to give any slipstream to Hamilton at first, because giving a slipstream to Hamilton would have given him some advantage or at least some possibility. Therefore Charles would have given the slipstream to Seb. That was what we agreed and discussed.
Vettel - who retired for a problem in his engine's hybrid system after his pitstop - refused to be drawn into the specifics of the pre-race agreement when speaking to TV crews afterward, but said: "I think I stuck to the agreement. But what Leclerc had to say after the race?
After the race, Leclerc said Ferrari arranged the drivers’ pit stops: "The agreement was simple, I had to give the slipstream to Seb, let him pass at the 2nd corner so we are 1st and 2nd and then swap back. The swap was a bit later in the pit stop and then we had the issue on Seb's car/VSC, very unlucky."
Leclerc says. "a bit later" means that Vettel didn't want actually to do the swap-job on time earlier as Leclerc had been expecting the positions to be swapped back right away, and Ferrari duly ordered Vettel to do so.
But team principal Mattia Binotto denied that was the case speaking in the team’s post-race media briefing with both drivers present.
“The undercut was not for the reason of giving back the position to Charles,” said Binotto, who claimed Leclerc’s pit stop was due to tire wear. “The left-rear was starting to be worn so that was the right moment for him to pit.”.
Disagreement it was or mismanagement, today, Ferrari lost the chance of winning the Russian GP and getting another 1-2 after the Singaporean GP last week. The team has failed to take advantage of the superb performance of their cars on the whole weekend.
