The Scuderia fell short in their quest for pole position during the Sprint Shootout at the Brazilian Grand Prix. However, could they actually be implementing a strategic game plan?
Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz have expressed that Ferrari has willingly compromised their chances on Saturdays for their planned attack in the São Paulo Grand Prix.
In the Sprint Shootout, which determines the grid for the 100km Sprint, the Scuderia duo achieved a modest seventh and ninth place in terms of speed.
Despite the SF-23 displaying impressive speed during Friday’s sessions at Interlagos, Leclerc will start in between AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda and Daniel Ricciardo, leading the duo.
In regard to his drop from pole contention in SQ3, the Monégasque clarified, “We were using old tires while I’m uncertain about others using scrubbed ones, hence we anticipated a less impressive performance.”
However, we are set aside the new tires for use at another location over the weekend.
Although Leclerc remained tight-lipped about the timing of utilizing the new tires, his teammate Sainz openly revealed Ferrari’s intentions during his session.
“The Spaniard explained that we had a strong competitive performance in both Q1 and Q2 on the Medium.”
After careful consideration, we opted to reserve the fresh set of tires for the race when it came to the Softs.
We made a straightforward decision to forgo the Sprint qualifying and Sprint race in order to potentially have a stronger performance on Sunday’s main race.
