Mattia Binotto: with Charles, “we thought we were safe!”

Every race weekend brings its share of troubles for Ferrari. Strategy, once again, raises questions after the qualifying evening in Monaco, but this time we are talking about minimum time: the time required for Sebastian Vettel and Charles Leclerc to advance to Q2.

Generally, the Scuderia isn’t bothered by this: but disaster struck this time in the Principality! The misfortune is unexpected, with the elimination of a red car in Q1, a first on merit since the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix in 2015, already with a strategic error impacting Vettel back then. This time, lightning struck his teammate, Leclerc!

For his home race, the former Sauber driver had only a few hopes after securing first place in FP3. Of course, caution was necessary as Mercedes was still hiding its game, but this excellent lap time could have allowed him to aim for a third place. Instead, the adventure abruptly ended in Q1. On soft tires, the local hero clocked a time of 1:12.149 before returning to the pits. Sixth with five minutes to go, Leclerc gradually dropped in the standings and fell into the red zone at the last moment, pushed by… Vettel, who was struggling after an aborted run. Although the Formula 2 champion hadn’t put in a bad lap, seven-tenths behind the German who was leading after Q1, Leclerc ended up on the wrong side by 52 thousandths.

After the fact, the Monegasque’s annoyance was naturally visible, as was his dismay. He can only find solace in Mattia Binotto’s explanations, who faced a tide of journalists to detail the error made by the Scuderia.

« We made a judgment error: we made a poor assessment of the minimum time required to move into Q2. » That’s the observation. The explanation is related to these two parameters:

« We thought we had some leeway, especially compared to what we had seen from the other cars in previous sessions. Also, we did not accurately estimate the evolution of the track! »

Finally, the error seems almost conceivable, with Leclerc’s engineers wanting to go all out.

« We did not want to use an additional set of tires, which would have helped us be more aggressive with Charles in Q2 and Q3 » concedes the boss of Ferrari in an almost curiously serene manner given the context.

But is this elimination related to increased attention on Vettel, who was eliminated two minutes before the end? On this point, the native of Lausanne defends himself: « we have the same attention for our two drivers. We made a precise assessment of the situation for both. »

Charles asked us if he should go or not: that’s where we misjudged our margin for maneuver by telling him that his time was sufficient to go to Q2. We were wrong. We are truly sorry for him.

Despite the pressure from journalists facing him, Mattia Binotto did not want to overreact on the spot, still believing in the team’s structures: « we have the right people and the right procedures, but we need to improve our efficiency. We need to take this opportunity to analyze it and see how we could have done things differently. »

In any case, saying that Ferrari didn’t need this is an understatement, as the team has already been overshadowed by Mercedes since the start of the season.

From our special correspondent in Monaco