Charles Leclerc experienced a complicated race at Interlagos and although he takes a rather positive assessment of the overall result with his fourth place, he identified several reasons why he did not manage to do better, namely the settings of his F1 and Ferrari's strategy.
“The race was very long and tricky, and the drivers who get on the podium are the ones who didn’t make the slightest mistake, so they really deserve it” Leclerc said. “I have mixed feelings about our race.”
“On the one hand it's a bit disappointing because we struggled to keep the car on the track in those conditions, especially towards the end of the race, because of the way we decided to set up our car on the other hand, we finished ahead of both McLarens, which is a nice surprise and helps us in our fight for the constructors' championship.
Unfortunately for Ferrari, McLaren, however, scored more points than the Scuderia thanks to the double finish in the points of its drivers. The Italian team could have reversed this trend by waiting for the interruption to stop, as Max Verstappen, Alpine drivers and Valtteri Bottas did.
“It was a mistake. It must also be said that in a race like this, it is very difficult not to make a mistake in terms of strategy, because there are a lot of decisions you have to make. And if you look, I think only the top three didn't make mistakes in a race like this.”
“We were on the other side of things, we stopped. I wanted some clean air, so I asked the team to find some clean air. They brought me in this round- there, but unfortunately the pit stop, well the time to enter and exit the pit in the wet was much longer than we thought.”
“I found myself in the middle of traffic with Ollie [Bearman] and Lewis [Hamilton]and from that moment I understood that we were losing a lot. There was a safety car and we lost three or four positions.”
The Monegasque, however, admits to having made a mistake in terms of settings, which made his SF-24 difficult to pilot: “I think I'm partly to blame, because we decided on the set-up with the team and I wanted to go in that direction. However, it wasn't the right route, that's for sure. The pace wasn't there. just wasn't there.”
“We were happy in qualifying, we weren't too bad. With the new tires and the low fuel level you can get more out of the car, but in the race we were nowhere. More than nowhere, it was extremely difficult to drive, extremely difficult not to make mistakes.”
In addition to the fact that Ferrari did not concede too many points, Leclerc is pleased to have managed to beat McLaren, which gives still hope for the Maranello team to fight for the constructors' title against the British team.
“In the end, looking at it all, the only thing we could be a little bit happy about is being ahead of both McLarens. To lose just four points in the constructors' standings is damage control over a weekend where they looked so strong. So yes, now we have to put everything together for the last three races.
