Thanks to this, Perez was outsmarted by Leclerc and Ferrari
General
- GPblog.com
Charles Leclerc is a happy man. The Ferrari driver optimised by crossing the line second in Abu Dhabi. According to Leclerc, this was mainly thanks to a dummy pit stop (pretending you intend to make a pit stop). Red Bull fell into the trap.
"It was honestly a great race. We executed to perfection which is what we were focusing on in the last few races, and we executed the right one. And, the one with most pressure with all the rumours going around coming into the weekend," said Leclerc, who knows there was quite a lot of pressure in Abu Dhabi because of all the rumours that surfaced last week. Indeed, Mattia Binotto is expected to leave at the end of the season, although Ferrari and Binotto themselves deny this.
The best Leclerc could do was beat Sergio Perez to finish second in the World Championship. Moreover, Ferrari secured P2 in the constructors' standings at the Yas Marina Circuit. "We managed to perform at our best in a position like this which makes me very proud of the team. On pure pace I don't think we were stronger than Red Bull, but we pushed them into mistakes and into two stops and eventually that paid of so overall we are happy."
At Sky Sports, Leclerc reveals that the Ferrari pit crew acted as if they were going to bring him in for a second. Red Bull anticipated this and had Perez come in for fresh rubber. "We were doubting but I have to say that everything that we done was exactly what we wanted to do. Exactly the laps that we were putting Checo under pressure. That was planned before," he concludes his story.