Scuderia Ferrari Team Principal Frederic Vasseur says that the Italian outfit sacrificed a strong result in the Sprint Race on Saturday to focus on Sunday’s Brazilian Grand Prix at the Interlagos circuit in Sao Paulo. Charles Leclerc finished the race in fifth place while Carlos Sainz came home in eighth and speaking following the final Sprint Race of the season, Vasseur commented:
We decided to partially sacrifice today’s race, with a view to being in better shape for the Grand Prix, so we will have to wait and see if we have played our cards right. We didn’t use new tyres in this morning’s qualifying, so tomorrow Charles will have one set of new Softs, Carlos will have one that’s just done two laps and they will both have two sets of new Mediums. Therefore, I’d say that today overall, we got the best result we could have done, bringing home important points and that was mainly down to excellent tyre management and Charles’ pass on Lewis (Hamilton) towards the end. The good job this afternoon will be analysed carefully and we will try and be even better prepared for tomorrow when we start with Charles on the front row and Carlos all set to race aggressively.
For Sunday’s race, Charles Leclerce starts from second place alongside Max Verstappen, and speaking following Saturday’s Sprint Race, Leclerc said:
We did a good job today and there was not much more on the cards. Not using new tyres for qualifying, preferring to keep them for the GP on Sunday, we knew we would be on the back foot for the Sprint. We did well anyway, finishing in P5 and getting ahead of Lewis (Hamilton), who qualified on a new set of Softs this morning. They are our main competitors for this year so it’s a good sign to be able to fight with them.
Carlos Sainz starts the race from seventh place and speaking following the Sprint Race he said:
Today we suffered more than expected in the Sprint. Our main limitation came from having to manage the engine temperatures and the tyres. This implied a lot of lift and coast from very early on in the race, which obviously affected our overall performance. However, I’m confident that tomorrow it will be better and that we’ll be able to push the car and the tyres more to recover some positions.