“It hurts” recognizes Leclerc, while Carlos assumes that his third zero “is extremely frustrating, but we will have to recover”
“To win, reliability must be perfect, we are not yet. Patience is needed,” says Scuderia boss Mattia Binotto
Ferrari has lived a real nightmare in Baku. The Scuderia box was a ‘funeral’ and the faces of Carlos Sainz, Charles Leclerc and their boss Mattia Binotto denoted deep disappointment at the double dropout, which in the case of LeclercIn addition, it has a high price in terms of championship.
The first to face the cameras has been sainz, who has reported a race that has ended for him in the tenth lap. After a bad start, the driver from Madrid changed his strategy and tried to save tires to go to a single stop. But when he had not yet started to squeeze the media, at the entrance of turn 4, a hydraulic failure has caused the blackout of his car and Carlos has stopped at the loophole.
Very ‘touched’ emotionally, Carlos He acknowledged that today “is a frustrating day both on a personal level and for the team” and explained that “I was anxious to start pushing after nine laps of managing tires, but that was it. I was entering the corner, I felt a problem in the shifter and everything went off, then it’s even more frustrating to see Charles withdrawing also for another problem. We will go through different times during the year. This is probably one of the most difficult and frustrating, but we will keep trying to recover.”
This is the third zero for sainz in eight grand prix, in a season marked by his problems adapting to the new F1-75 and his own errors or those of his team’s strategy. “Going empty is happening quite often. It’s very difficult and so far the season has decided to go this way and for me it’s extremely frustrating, but we’ll have to bounce back, we’ve got to be patient and positive for the future.”
“I think we have a good team to fight for the title, and it is true that we are fighting against the current world champions, a great team as it is Red Bull. They also had a double DNF in Bahrain. This kind of thing happens from time to time, and now we must learn from it to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” said Sainz to finish.
The summary of the situation by Leclerc has been definitive: “It hurts” said the Monegasque with a rictus of absolute disappointment. After missing the podium at home two weeks ago, Charles had great hopes in Baku, where on Saturday he signed his sixth pole, but breaking the engine after twenty laps was not in his plans: “”We have been fast and we have not had any major problems in the first part of the season. Now, it seems that we have more breakdowns compared to the beginning of the season, when we have not changed anything. If anything, we’ve gotten better, so it’s hard to understand. We will have to analyze it deeply, obviously. I don’t have a complete idea of what happened today.”
Mattia Binotto He attended to DAZN reporters as Ferrari staff dismantled the team’s facility in Azerbaijan, even before the race was over. “These are two retirements that penalize us for what the race has been, Charles was in the lead thanks to a good team strategy. Reliability is a concern, but just as we were not excited at the beginning of the season, today we are not worried about that. To win, the reliability must be perfect, we still are not. We will work, this team is capable of doing it”, he analyzed without too much self-criticism.
“Our strategy was the best. It was the others who were wrong. The pit stop under the virtual safety car had given us an advantage, with the medium we were competitive and we opted for the hard one. We are not going to be dramatic. We must understand the problems and try to solve them. We will be even stronger in the future. Sometimes you need patience. It can change everything.” Binottowho is already looking at next weekend’s appointment in Canada.
“We will analyze what has happened, it is too early to know exactly what has gone wrong, we will do it by returning to the factory in Maranello but we do not have time to correct or make structural changes for Canada,” he concluded.