Schippke wrote:Had it not been for the safety car, it would've been interesting to see if Sainz could've stayed ahead of Norris in the first stint of the race... but the restart didn't go so well clearly. I think the mistake was made when they switched Carlos to Mediums, after seeing Charles was seemingly struggling a bit on them.
In saying that, Norris went from Softs to Mediums and was still pulling away from Charles on Hards by races end... so clearly it mightn't have been that bad of a strategy. Could be a mix of Carlos still learning how to balance pace/tyre wear in the SF21... or maybe the car wasn't getting the most out of the Mediums (or taking too much out of them?).
A lot of people have been complaining about the team orders move... can't see the problem honestly; Maximise the potential of the faster team car on track, which is exactly what they did.
I do think that McLaren (with Norris at this stage) definitely seem to have the pace on Ferrari. In saying that, Barcelona will be a good venue to see a bit of performance on a more known track, despite not testing there this year... lets see how we go there.
Carlos had a few things going against him with his Medium tire stint:
A) As acknowledged by Leclerc, their setup wasn’t very kind on the medium tire.
B) Trying to do the undercut, he probably pushed a bit too hard on the out lap, in addition and as stated by Norris, Carlos was pushing very hard after Lando’s Pit Stop which worn down both cars tires a bit too much
C) Carlos spent much of his second stint in dirty air compared to Lando, who for the most part was in clean air, this will also have had a negative effect on Carlos tires.
D) The undercut attempt simply was done too early, at that point in the race, both Carlos and Norris times were very decent compared to the guys behind them on Mediums and could have easily extended that stint for a few more laps, making their stint on Mediums a faster paced one (didn’t Stroll managed like 34 laps on Softs?)... Ferrari was a bit over ambitious, not only trying to pull the undercut very early on the stint, but also going with to Mediums for what ended up been a very long second stint.
It was interesting that the better strategy was to go for Hards on the second stint compared to Mediums (for the ones starting on Softs) compared to what Pirelli suggested... I thought both Mclaren and Sainz got it wrong
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