Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto has revealed that the Scuderia will investigate the side’s strategic processes following yet another embarrassing blunder at the 2022 Brazilian Grand Prix.
Perhaps even more unsurprising, it was Charles Leclerc who was the Italians victim, with the Monegasque seemingly ending up as the unlucky driver for the majority of the Maranello-based team’s errors.
The strategic mistake on this occasion came at the start of Q3, where Ferrari decided to fit Leclerc with the Intermediate tyres due to a threat of heavy rain; however, the track was completely dry.
Leclerc was the only person on the mixed-conditions tyre, with the remainder of the top 10 having been on the Softs.
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As a result, Leclerc qualified P10 for the sprint race, which in turn made the remainder of his weekend more challenging.
After the session on Friday, the 24-year-old admitted that he was “extremely disappointed” and that the team must “do better”.
“We were expecting some rain which never came,” Leclerc said after qualifying.
“I will speak with the team and try to understand what we can do better in those conditions. But I’m extremely disappointed. The pace was there.”
Despite the conditions having been odd, with rain having played a part in sections of the session, Binotto did admit that the team made the “wrong” call by splitting their strategy.
Carlos Sainz was fitted with the Softs unlike Leclerc, resulting in Binotto wanting his side to work out why they decided to fit the Intermediates in the first place.
“Obviously, when you’ve got such weather conditions, it’s always a lottery,” Binotto said, per Motorsport.com.
“I think the fact that Kevin [Magnussen] was on the pole, with [Lewis] Hamilton eighth on the grid and [Sergio] Perez ninth, it’s a lottery, no?
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“But we made it wrong, because certainly we are the only one on intermediates at the time, and not on slicks.
“Those types of mistakes I think, in such a lottery situation, they always happen. Plus those mistakes can turn into the right decision as well, because it’s only a weather change that maybe a minute after was simply happening.
“But, what I’m looking at, together with the team, was the process that brought us to such a decision, which I think is more important rather than the decision itself. Was it right or wrong, and why are we doing that when maybe the others didn’t?”