Ferrari detail litany of Monaco mistakes that robbed Leclerc of victory

Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto — Photo: © LAT Images

Monaco Grand Prix

Ferrari detail litany of Monaco mistakes that robbed Leclerc of victory

Ferrari failed to translate a grid one-two into a victory

Sam Hall

Monday 30 May 2022 08:00

Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto has detailed the litany of mistakes that cost Charles Leclerc a home victory in Monaco.

Leclerc had spearheaded a Ferrari front-row lock-out at the principality circuit but a number of wretched calls from the pit wall resulted in the 24-year-old finishing fourth at the chequered flag, with team-mate Carlos Sainz second.

In contrast, Red Bull executed a perfect strategy as Sergio Perez claimed the third F1 win of his career, with reigning champion team-mate Max Verstappen third as each driver pulled off an overcut on one of their Ferrari rivals.

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Reflecting on how his team threw away a win, Binotto said: "First, we need to admit that if you are leading the race and you finish in fourth position, we may have done something wrong.

"So, we certainly made mistakes in our judgements and we made mistakes in our calls.

"The first was underestimating the pace of the intermediate [tyre] and the gap we had to the other cars in terms of track position. It's something we need to look at.

"We've had our briefing with the drivers, we went through it, we had discussions, tried to understand, but believe me, it was quite a complicated one. It was not an obvious one but certainly we made a mistake.

"We made a mistake as well because we should have called him earlier, at least a lap earlier, or if not, we should have stayed out and stayed on the wet to protect the position then maybe switching directly to the dry.

"That main mistake is straightforward. What was the process that took us to that? It will take some more time to look at it and have a clear explanation."

Binotto dismisses "unlucky" suggestion

Suggested to Binotto he and the team had been unlucky given the difficulty in making the calls given the changing conditions, he replied: "No. It was not a matter of being lucky or unlucky. We've made mistakes in our judgments.

"We were leading the race here in Monaco and you should be in position, if not keeping the lead, at least finishing second.

"Finishing fourth shows we did something wrong, so I don't think it's a matter of being unlucky. We could have won the race, even Carlos."

Referring to a pit stop that allowed Perez to perform his overcut, Binotto added: "He [Sainz] was unfortunate because he found [Nicholas] Latifi.

"He was stuck behind him, with solid blue flags for two sectors, and without that, he would have been ahead of Perez.

"There were situations that were not in our favour but we made some wrong judgements."