Binotto reacts to Ferrari mistakes: "Had to make a choice between the two"
F1 News
Carlos Sainz won the British Grand Prix and survived the problems Ferrari threw at their two drivers. Charles Leclerc was the victim of Ferrari's crew deciding who to pit during the late safety car period. Team boss Mattia Binotto reacted to these mistakes in an interview on Sky Sports.
Not enough space
Esteban Ocon stopped his car on a straight and therefore the race director had to call the safety car out whilst Leclerc had a decent lead. With just 12 laps remaining, a stint on the soft tyres was possible and therefore most drivers dived into the pits. Ferrari pitted Sainz, who eventually won the race, but left Leclerc out on the hard tyres to defend his lead. Binotto explains the thought process.
"We believe the position we didn't have enough space between the two cars to stop both of them. We had to make a choice between the two cars. We decided to stop Carlos because Charles had the track position. You don't know what the others would've done. Then we were hoping for more tyre degradation on the soft but that didn't happen," Binotto said.
When Leclerc had reached the pit entry, there were around nine seconds between the two teammates and tighter double stacks have happened in Formula 1 in previous years. But Binotto didn't want to risk something going wrong.
"We didn't think so. The others were just behind, you cannot lose a second at the pitstop to organise it. We kept track position," Binotto said.