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Charles Leclerc says that he and Ferrari Formula 1 team-mate Carlos Sainz “cannot afford” to battle each other at the start of tomorrow’s Austrian Grand Prix as intensely as they were able to do in the sprint, despite both drivers being confident the time they lost fighting on the opening lap didn’t affect the result.
Leclerc said that not as a complaint about the early battle in the Red Bull Ring sprint, but as a statement of fact about the different circumstances they will face in the longer, more strategically-complicated race on Sunday.
He conceded a small amount of time was lost to their battle but didn’t believe it was decisive. Sainz felt the same given how “in control” Red Bull driver Max Verstappen was up front, but also highlighted the need in Sunday’s race for Ferraris to be closer to the Dutchman at the start and end of stints.
Sainz passed Leclerc, who had been held on the inside line approaching the first corner by Verstappen, around the outside of Turn 1 on the opening lap.
He then attempted to pass Verstappen around the outside of Turn 3. This left the door wide open for Leclerc, who attempted to overtake before falling in behind on the following straight.
Having sat in Sainz’s slipstream, Leclerc then passed him up the inside to take second place. The pair finished the opening lap a second behind Verstappen.
Leclerc held that position to the end despite Sainz diving up the inside of Leclerc at Turn 3 on lap seven, locking up the right-front tyre. He then unsuccessfully attempted to pass around the outside at Turn 4 on lap 7. At that stage in the race, Verstappen’s advantage was growing, peaking at just under three seconds at the end of lap eight.
Verstappen eventually won by 1.6s, with Leclerc finishing four seconds ahead of Sainz.
“Tomorrow is going to be a long race and time management will be quite a bit more important. compared to today,” said Leclerc.
“So probably tomorrow we cannot afford to do what we did today”
He added that the time lost to the battle was only “a little bit”.
“Whether this was enough to get the win, I don’t think so because Max was also managing them [the tyres] once he had the gap, so we’ll never know what will have happened.”
Sainz felt that there was little to lose or gain for Ferrari given the race situation.
“There were a few battles going on at the beginning, first at the start and then on [lap seven], which was fun,’ said Sainz.
“It was a shame that I couldn’t get him in the end. He had a pretty good exit at Turn 3 and it wasn’t quite enough to get him.
“From there on I lost a bit of grip in the tyres, on the front and the rears, and I had to recover the battery, the tyres and get back into a rhythm.
“There was very little to gain or lose by the fight. We are talking about one point more, one point less because in the sprint there’s not many points and also Max looked very in control the whole race. So it’s not like we lost out massively.”
Both drivers said that it will be up to team principal Mattia Binotto to decide whether team orders will be implemented in Sunday’s race.
“Mattia and the team will decide,” said Sainz on the so-called ‘rules of engagement’ between the pair.
“It’s not like we lost a lot and it didn’t look like Max was struggling too much up front with our pace.
“But we need to make sure we stay closer at the beginning of a stint and we are closer at the end of a stint. That is what we need to try and do tomorrow.”
Leclerc said that he focused on tyre management early on in the sprint, more so than Verstappen and Sainz, in order to be in good shape grip-wise at the end of the race on the Pirelli mediums.
He argued that he was “probably stronger than at the beginning” although said he didn’t know whether the pace was good enough to have potentially beaten Verstappen.
Verstappen suggested the battle the Ferrari drivers had early on did help him to build up an advantage, but reckoned that overall the two teams had similar race pace.
“They had a little fight in the beginning of the race so that I could pull a gap and then control the gap,” said Verstappen.
“But you could see towards the end of the race, we were very closely matched in pace. So I do expect tomorrow to be a tight race.”
Ferrari’s team tactics under intense scrutiny after a difficult British Grand Prix, which was won by Sainz after Leclerc was left out on hard Pirellis under the late safety car. That followed time lost earlier in the race when Ferrari was initial reluctant to order the faster Leclerc past Sainz.
But both drivers are right that their battle probably didn’t make a difference to the result of the sprint. Sainz originally got ahead of Leclerc at Turn 1 because of Leclerc being stuck on the compromised inside line thanks to Verstappen positioning, effectively a pass he had no choice but to make, then made the most of his start to attack Verstappen at Turn 3.
That was the closest the Ferrari drivers got and while they did subsequently battle, they had already lost ground to Verstappen in those early stages anyway. Effectively, Sainz’s attempted pass on lap one was the best opportunity, and given he ended up on the outside line at Turn 3, Leclerc had little choice but to attack to the inside.
Once they were battling on lap seven, the race was effectively over. In the sprint, that fight wasn’t a big problem, but repeated in the grand prix itself it could be a major hindrance.
