Lando Norris was not happy to see Carlos Sainz able to regain his third place on the grid, repair the damage to his Ferrari and change his tires. The McLaren F1 driver admits that this rule is a luck factor, but he deplores that it exists and thinks it is totally unfair.
“I don’t think it’s the fairest thing, but I’m sure there have been times in the past where I may have gotten lucky and they may have been able to fix a little car, or something like that” Norris said.
“It’s frustrating and unfair that because someone makes a mistake and because of a number of cars not crossing a line, they can reverse their mistake and get a free pit stop. It is unfair.”
An opinion shared by George Russell. The Mercedes driver does not know the exact rule but is surprised that drivers have a joker and a second chance: “It’s not correct. I don’t know the rules, but yes it was a bit strange”.
McLaren boss Andrea Stella explained that this rule had been an opportunity for Sainz (who took advantage of Guanyu Zhou’s difficulties in getting through the crash zone), and that it was not his only chance of the weekend. . The Italian reveals that Piastri was badly affected in the collision with Sainz on the first start and that he benefited from repairs.
“As soon as the collision happened, we saw a drop of 20 points [d’appui]which is about half a second here in Monaco.” Stella explains. “But thanks to the red flag, we were able to repair the floor, because the side wing of the floor was broken.”
“We repaired it, but not completely, and we changed the side wing which was also broken. Overall, the deficit was therefore around 10 points over the whole race, which represents a few tenths, maybe -be 0.25 seconds.”
“It obviously made us a little more nervous about being able to keep the tires in a good situation, in a good condition, because the car was a little damaged. But Oscar managed to do it and, in the end , the damage had no influence on the final result.”
