Ferrari Team Principal Fred Vasseur has described Charles Leclerc’s two-stop strategy at the Formula 1 Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix as “the perfect call”.
Starting 11th, Leclerc was on the backfoot from the beginning, but an aggressive yet calculating drive saw him leap up the order to eventually finish sixth.
The SF-25, which has come under fire for its instability and lack of performance, produced a good showing in race trim at Imola, with Lewis Hamilton also profiting to finish fourth.
A late Safety Car saw a flurry of cars pit for tyres, with Leclerc requesting to do so himself, but the team instructed him to stay out, with the brand-new C6 Soft tyres being the only option left for him.
Speaking to media including Motorsport Week after the race, Vasseur explained that the uncertainty around the speed of the C6’s degradation was behind the call to keep Leclerc out.
“When we had the Safety Car, [it] was something like 13-14 laps before the end, and we didn’t know how many laps the Safety Car would stay,” he said.
“We didn’t have Medium anymore, it was either to pit for Soft or nothing, and Soft was really on the edge, we were not sure that when we started to communicate with Charles, at one stage he understood that it would be on the edge.”
Vasseur said that Leclerc was aware that a possible double-stack behind would have cost him “an extra five seconds”, and added that he felt the decision taken was the right one.
“I think it was the perfect call, well managed between the pit crew and Charles, and I spoke with Charles, and he said ‘OK, we redo the race now’, we pit for Soft, we did eight or nine laps at the end, it’s really on the edge to survive with nine laps in the soft, we can have a very good start at the start of the Safety Car, but I think the end of the stint would have been more than needed.”
Ultra-long stint on Hards for Ferrari at Imola ‘too ambitious’
Leclerc has seen a string of impressive performances obscured by the SF-25’s performance levels, which have held both him and Hamilton back so far.
Imola was no exception, with Leclerc being given freedom to risk high degradation early on in the race to work his way up the field.
Ferrari confirmed that Leclerc’s pit stops at Imola were “on target,” and Vasseur further explained that sufficient tweaks were necessary to account for the Safety Car, but did believe opting to use the C4s for too long would have been harmful.
“I don’t have the number of laps in mind now because we adapted the strategy for the circumstances,” he said, “but if we did something like Lap 9 or 10, it would have been too ambitious to do 51 or 52 laps of the Hard compound.”
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