Charles Leclerc: “One-stop strategy was definitely not a mistake”

Charles Leclerc believes Ferrari did the right thing by switching him to hard tyres at his first pit stop in the Spanish Grand Prix. Leclerc and his teammate Sebastian Vettel didn’t feel that periods of confusion on the Ferrari pit wall during the Spanish Grand Prix had affected the outcome of the race, or led to tension between them out on the track. It appears that the race engineers for the two drivers were unaware of what was happening on the other side, and it took lengthy discussions to decide whether to use team orders to switch the cars around on the track. Vettel had the initial upper hand at the start of the race, but then made a mistake at the first corner. Running immediately behind his teammate on track, Leclerc pleaded to be allowed to pass Vettel to take up the chase to the leaders but the decision was a long time being handed down. When it did, Vettel duly obliged. Things were different after the first round of pit stops when Vettel took on a fresh pair of soft tyres while Leclerc was put on the slower hard compound rubber, forcing the team to switch the cars back again. “I could have done many things so it’s difficult to say. But I think it was the right thing to do. It’s always the right thing to try, at least,” said Leclerc. “I think we had a very competitive race simulation on the hard tyres on Friday and I think it was good to try. To be honest from the beginning the balance was maybe not as good as Friday. But at the time when we put the hard there was no way back.” However, the appearance of the Safety Car wiped out Leclerc’s advantage over his rivals and meant he had to pit again. He said he wasn’t sure whether he could have kept third place without it: “Obviously then we had the Safety Car [which] compromised our strategy. But I think it was a good try and it was definitely not a mistake trying it. “Whether I could have kept them behind, I don’t know. Barcelona is definitely a very hard track to overtake on. But we’ll never know.”

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