Iñaki Rueda explained the reasons why they lost in Monte Carlo, with Sergio’s amazing speed as the main reason for his mistakes
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Checo Pérez won the 2022 Monaco GP over Carlos Sainz, Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc (Photo: REUTERS/Benoit Tessier)
Reactions around Czech Perezin Monaco they don’t stop, because in addition to offering quite a show on the Monte Carlo circuit, the Mexican surprised locals and strangers alike with his powerful race pace, with which he managed to make an extraordinary undercut to the Leclerc and Sainz cars.
If Sergio got the victory last weekend, much of it was due to the great strategy of his team, as he was the first of the leading drivers to go to the pits to change his wet tires for the intermediate ones. This move was crucial and greatly damaged the Ferrari team.
This analysis was made public by one of the Italian team’s engineers, Iñaki Rueda, in the customary debrief of the race, where he stated that he had underestimated Checo when he first went into the pits, since they did not expect him to cut such amount of time to their pilots.
Ferrari revealed that it was wrong twice in the strategy of the Monaco GP REUTERS/Christian Bruna)
“With Charles (Leclerc) we made two mistakes. The first of them was to protect us from Pérez”, Iñaki began to explain regarding the team’s reaction after seeing the times of the Mexican after his first stop in the pits to switch to intermediate tires.
“We had a big ten second lead (Leclerc over Checo) and we thought it would be enough, but when Pérez stopped he was much quicker on the intermediates”
Ferrari’s strategy engineer mentioned that they expected to start a second ahead of Checo when Leclerc was called; however, Sergio’s powerful pace caused an undercutbrutal that left them with no chance of maintaining P1 and P2 that they had with their drivers.
“We had the data from other cars and we knew that since Pérez stopped, that ten-second lead It would diminish. When Charles was in the (curve of the) pool he went down four (seconds) apart. According to our information, he was going to start a second ahead, but we did not expect Pérez to be up to nine seconds faster than him on that lap . There we lost the victory with Charles”, sentenced the strategist Rueda.
This means that Pérez’s early stop on lap 16 meant a much higher performance in times compared to his rivals in front, because although they were only two laps apart from when Leclerc stopped, they were enough to make the undercut to the two Ferrari drivers.
Checo Pérez surprised with his strategy and managed to overtake Leclerc and Sainz with his first two pit stops (Photo: REUTERS/Benoit Tessier)
Because the strategy failed with Leclerc , the Italian team opted for a different one with Carlos Sainz, who was about to be placed P1 after stretching his extreme rain tires as much as possible and making a single stop directly to the hard compound; however, starting behind Latifi on lap 21 robbed him of the time needed to take the lead when Pérez stopped for the second time.
For If this were not enough, Iñaki Rueda explained the other mistake they had with Leclerc, the one that went viral on social networks due to his claim in the radio communication, when they decided to call their two drivers to the pits at the same time.
“To be able to stop both cars at the same time you need a difference of six seconds and we had it before that lap, but when they got to the pits, the distance had became three and a half. We made one last call to Charles to stay out, but it was too late. He lost two seconds and that allowed Verstappen to get ahead on the next lap”, he sentenced.