In the adjacent garage the team had been intending to also fit Carlos Sainz with inters. “No!” he insisted strongly, before instructing them to fit him with soft-compound slicks and to get him down to the end of the pitlane as soon as possible, if not sooner.
This was the third time in the season that we know about that Sainz had intervened in correcting choices the team was about to make – and each time he was proven right. In Monaco there was his insistence that he go straight through from wets to slicks, missing out the intermediate phase. That prevented him from being passed by both Red Bulls rather than just one. Then there was the Silverstone restart when he had to calmly explain why wasting his new tires trying to hold the pack off the old-tyred Leclerc’s back wasn’t going to work and that the only way the team was going to win this race was to let Sainz push on and have Leclerc in the defensive position.
It wasn’t Sainz’s fault that the team had left Leclerc out there defenseless, nor was he the reason they had made the wrong calls on Leclerc’s Monaco strategy. But doing what was best for the team – trying to rescue it from its own folly – once those mistakes had been made would of course involve Sainz jumping ahead of Leclerc. It wasn’t some calculated bid to trick a faster teammate on the day, but simply pointing out the best way forward once the team found itself in the situation it did. It was Sainz refusing to be subject to the same errors of judgment from the team that Leclerc had accepted.
Leclerc is rumored to be looking beyond Ferrari for his F1 future
Ferrari
Leclerc and Sainz rub along pretty well, work hard behind the scenes and are an incredibly strong pairing – the monumentally gifted but tough Leclerc and the very quick and smart Sainz. But it’s going to be interesting to see how the whole team-drivers develops dynamically as the Scuderia enters next season with a new team principal. Binotto was very much behind the promotion of Leclerc to team number one and the recruitment of Sainz to replace Sebastian Vettel. There’s been no material difference in what’s been at their disposal but the focus is inevitably on the guy who is setting the glittering sequence of poles and who was recruited as their big hope for the future. But under a new boss, how might that dynamic change? Will Sainz need to get even more proactive in over-riding the team? Does Leclerc have to begin emulating that? What does that do to the relationship? Does Ferrari feel it has already lost Leclerc long term (there are rumors of a pre-agreement with Mercedes)? In which case will he remain its focus? Can the harmony and effective partnership of this line-up be maintained?
This could all get very tricky, very quickly and it needs a calm, logical presence at the head to keep it from doing so and squandering all that talent residing within the cockpits and outside of them.