Points and a podium, with graining affecting performance

Scuderia Ferrari HP picked up plenty of points and had one driver on the podium in the Las Vegas Grand Prix courtesy of Carlos Sainz, who crossed the line third ahead of Charles Leclerc. The race was far from perfect but nevertheless the team has made up 12 points on McLaren, closing the gap to the Constructors’ championship leaders to 24. The laps run on the Medium tyres in the first stint weighed heavily on the team’s performance as the SF-24 struggled more than its rivals with graining. But it was clear that today Mercedes was clearly quicker than the rest. Today, Ferrari was the second best team and that was reflected in the result.

The race. George Russell kept the lead at the start, with Charles getting off the line very well from fourth spot to move up to second going into turn 1, passing Pierre Gasly as well as his team-mate Carlos. In the opening laps, Leclerc tried to pass the leader, but was unable to do so and, having pushed hard, he found his Medium tyres were struggling and their performance dropped dramatically, forcing him to pit early on lap 9 to switch to Hards, rejoining in 16^th place. Carlos soon followed to get rid of the Mediums, switching to Hards and also moving up the order. It soon became clear that a one-stop strategy would not work on the Las Vegas track and as the race went on, the SF-24s performance improved more and more after the Hards had also suffered with graining on their first stint. There was also a misunderstanding between team and driver at the moment of Carlos’ second stop and he had to go round for one more lap, losing time and a position on track to Lewis Hamilton. Even without that error, it would have been difficult to keep the Englishman behind as his car had such a pace advantage over the rest of the field. After their second stops, the Ferraris showed good pace and consistency and were thus able to close on Max Verstappen who was then third. Both Carlos and Charles overtook the Dutchman to claim third and fourth places, while Verstappen’s fifth place was still enough to secure him the Drivers’ title. The positions then remained the same to the chequered flag.

Back on track. The season continues immediately with the teams now packing their bags and heading off on the long flight to Qatar, for the penultimate round of the season. It’s a Sprint weekend, which means there are 59 Constructors’ championship points up for grabs. 

Carlos Sainz #55

Considering the pace Mercedes had today I think we maximised the team’s points, and even without the misunderstanding at the pit entry on my second stop I don’t think we would have been able to stay ahead of Lewis. I was expecting to be more competitive after what we had seen in practice but we struggled quite a lot with graining today.Considering the pace Mercedes had today I think we maximised the team’s points, and even without the misunderstanding at the pit entry on my second stop I don’t think we would have been able to stay ahead of Lewis. I was expecting to be more competitive after what we had seen in practice but we struggled quite a lot with graining today.We will keep fighting in the next races to keep the battle for the Constructors’ title open until the end. On to Qatar. 

Charles Leclerc #16

I finished the race where I started it today, so it wasn’t that exciting, but if you look at the details it was quite an eventful one. Unfortunately, we degraded the fronts on the first stint on Mediums, then we were able to come back on the Hards which were working better. Big congratulations to Max (Verstappen). He deserves this championship title, he has had an amazing season and always maximised his results which has paid off for him. It gives us motivation to be even stronger next year and hopefully we can put him under some more pressure then.We will push hard in the last two races to try to finish the season ahead of McLaren.

Fred Vasseur - Team Principal Scuderia Ferrari HP

First of all, congratulation to Max Verstappen on winning the title. As for our race, we struggled a lot in the first stint on the Mediums, losing about two seconds per lap towards the end and again at the end of the second stint, the first one on the Hards. Overall, our pace on the Hards was decent, but we lost too much time in the early stages and generally our pace was a bit too inconsistent.In the end today’s race was a case of damage limitation, but at some point we have to score more points than everyone else and we cannot just settle for this damage limitation if we want to keep the fight open. We scored 12 points more than McLaren and 16 more than Red Bull. Let’s see what we can do next week in Qatar, a track that on paper does not suit us best, but in which there is a Sprint and so even more points on offer. As a team, we need to do a better job at the next race.