Ferrari review latest tactical blunder despite "lottery situation"

Ewan Gale
Wednesday 16 November 2022 17:45

Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto has revealed a review of the strategic disarray during São Paulo Grand Prix after another comical error on Charles Leclerc's side of the garage.

The Scuderia had already shown cracks in its system during Q1 of the wet-dry-wet session at Interlagos, with Leclerc being fitted with three different tyre sets before being able to leave the pit box.

But the biggest error was sending the Monégasque out on a set of intermediates for Q3 with rain expected to fall, though the other nine drivers all set a time on softs.

George Russell's trip to the gravel sealed Leclerc's fate, leaving him tenth for the sprint event.

After Ferrari finished third and fourth in the grand prix proper, Binotto, whose position as team principal had to be defended by Ferrari after reports of an imminent sacking, conceded mistakes were made and would be placed under review.

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“Obviously, when you’ve got such weather conditions, it’s always a lottery and the fact that Kevin [Magnussen] was on pole or [Lewis] Hamilton eighth on the grid or Perez ninth is proving that it is a lottery," said Binotto.

“But we made it [the decision] wrong, because he was the only one on the intermediate at the time and not on slicks.

“Those type of mistakes in such a lottery situation may always happen and they could also turn into the right decision as well because it is only a weather change maybe a minute after what happened.

“But what I am looking at together with the team is what were the processes that brought us to such a decision which I think is more important than the decision itself and was it right or wrong. Why are we doing that when others didn’t?”