Carlos Sainz, Ferrari Formula 1 driver, claims he lost his maiden Monaco Grand Prix victory because of the traffic. He encountered traffic on his outlap after changing his slicks at his first pit stop.
Over-taking at Circuit de Monaco is very difficult. Final position of the leader, in the wet-to-dry race, is decided on the final pitstop time.
Similar transition from wets to inters and then slicks caught Ferrari. Charles Leclerc, pole sitter and leader, was furious on the poor pitstop which slipped him to fourth position behind Sainz and both Red Bulls’ drivers.
Sainz had the opportunity to win the race, but pit stop on lap 21 cost him the victory where he changed the tyres directly to slicks from wet. The team expected from the strategic move to remain ahead of the Red Bull drier, Sergio Perez.
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Red Bull acted accordingly and boxed Perez after running a lap on the dry track which turned in favor of the team. Perez managed to keep two seconds gap from Sainz, who lost time because of traffic on his outlap. The Spaniard believes it cost him the lead and eventually the maiden victory.
“I felt like we did everything that we had to do out there,” Sainz said. “We stayed patient on the wets. We took the right decision to go on to the slick and a terrible outlap there stuck behind a lapped car cost me a race win today.
“You can understand the frustration because a clean out lap would have secured me the race win today. But it’s how this sport is sometimes.”
Most teams opted for intermediate before moving to slicks. However, Sainz asked the team to move ahead and go straight for slick from extreme wet tyres. He realized that directly moving on to hard tyres provides the best chance of him taking and keeping the lead.
“Yeah, I knew it from halfway through the first stint. I started to see the dry line and I started to realise that it was going to go straight into slicks,” Sainz explained.
“I think we did the right call as we were leading the race, basically. Then we pitted for that hard tyre. Obviously hard is never easy on the outlap, but I had to do 12 corners or something like that behind the lapped car that cost me at least a couple of seconds that cost me a race win.
“Anyway, I’m not gonna complain too much. I know that this sport is like that. Checo was unlucky in Jeddah, today he did a great race plus got lucky with myself and in this sport, it will turn around one day or later.”
