Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur says a cooling error by the Scuderia forced Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz into a “lift and coast” race in Saturday’s Sprint at Interlagos.
Both Leclerc and Sainz – who qualified respectively P7 and P9 for the 24-lap event – gained a spot at the start, with the Monegasque advancing another position in the closing stages of the race to finish fifth, with his teammate crossing the checkered flag 8th.
However, both drivers were forced to manage their efforts due to soaring temperatures, which inevitably led to the pair lifting off the throttle earlier than normal, and even in clean air.
A positive however was that Ferrari had opted for the sprint to bolt on a set of used softs on its cars in a bid to have fresh rubber available for Sunday’s Grand Prix.
But Sainz admitted that a tyre allocation advantage will be of little help if more “lift and coast” management is required.
"We would use all the worst possible sets that we had available and we saved the good ones for [the Sunday grand prix] so hopefully this helps,” Sainz explained.
"But it will not be very positive if we need to keep doing so much lift and coast, which for our temperatures was very, very tricky. We simply couldn't push our race.
"Hopefully, it goes in a better direction but today is the most lift and coast I've ever had to do.
"I was having to do so much lift and coast that I couldn't even push the braking, so I had to make sure I had DRS to at least be quick on the straights."
Vasseur revealed that Ferrari had got its cooling wrong in the short race, which left the team “exposed”.
"We made a small mistake on the cooling today and we asked the drivers to do a massive lift and cost from lap two," he said.
The Frenchman elaborated on what he hopes will be a tyre advantage on Sunday for the Italian outfit's drivers.
"We decided to partially sacrifice today’s race, with a view to being in better shape for the Grand Prix, so we will have to wait and see if we have played our cards right," he said.
"We didn’t use new tyres in this morning’s qualifying, so tomorrow Charles will have one set of new softs, Carlos will have one that’s just done two laps and they will both have two sets of new mediums."
Leclerc will launch his race on Sunday from the front row alongside poleman Max Verstappen, a position at the front that he hopes will mitigate any temperature worries that may arise.
But the Scuderia charger believes that even if he beats the Dutchman into Turn 1, his lead will likely be short-lived.
"The cars are getting so fast now that you have to do these kinds of lifts off… But for sure, from my side, it was the worst [so far this year],” he said.
"If this is the pace of the cars, then I'm pretty sure that even if I pass him that's a bit irrelevant, because I think in two or three laps, he should be passing me."
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