Sainz: Ferrari could've been "more patient" with Monaco F1 race strategy

Sainz survived early contact with Alpine’s Esteban Ocon at the Nouvelle Chicane with minor front wing damage to keep the podium in sight through the opening half of the race.

On lap 33 of 78, Ocon suffered a slow stop as he switched to fresh mediums, with Ferrari opting to pit Sainz on the following tour in an attempt to utilise the overcut and cover off Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton, who was eighth after his first trip to the pits.

But the strategy backfired, and Sainz dropped failed to pass Ocon, before falling further back – much to the Ferrari driver’s ire.

“What the f***! This is exactly what I talked about,” he raged to his team on the radio, adding “I don’t care about Hamilton” when told about the reason for his stop.

Commenting on his race afterwards, Sainz felt his pace was such that Ferrari should have been more patient with its strategy call - particularly as he was using the harder rubber.

“We had a bit of an eventful race always chasing Ocon and on the gearbox of Ocon,” he said when asked about his grand prix by Autosport.

“I saved my tyres well, the hard tyres, and it looked like he had a slow pitstop and I was flying on the in-lap and we decided to go for the overcut.

“Probably, given the pace I was showing, maybe we could've been a bit more patient but it's how it is.”

Carlos Sainz, Ferrari

Photo by: Alessio Morgese

Sainz had to double stack behind team-mate Charles Leclerc on his second stop for intermediate tyres when rain hit the Monaco track, which dropped him to his eventual finishing position of eighth.

He called this stop “a lottery” due to the nature of the race at that point, and concedes he should have kept his frustrations at bay over the first one.

“I think Monaco, first of all is a bit of a lottery, and today was a bit of a lottery for everyone - probably I just got the worst out of it,” he added.

“The first pitstop is debatable - I will go back and review because obviously I was very quick on the in-lap and felt like I still had a lot more lap time to come in clean air.

“I had been doing all that management, to suddenly pit, it left me frustrated.

“But I shouldn't have showed it on the radio, first of all, always due to frustration and then the second pitstop, as I said before, it's a lottery.

“It's not getting it right or wrong it was one lap too early, one lap too late.”

Leclerc, who finished sixth after starting there due to a three-place grid penalty for an impeding incident in qualifying, noted that it’s easy to criticise strategy plans at Monaco – but “would have changed things” with the benefit of hindsight.

“I think it was hard for both of us,” he said of both of the Ferrari duo’s races.

“Then, with the benefit of hindsight, you always do something different, especially with a track like this where it’s very easy to criticise the strategy after the race I think, because if you stop early and there’s a safety car, most of the time this is what happens and then you’re like ‘why did we stop so early?’

“We knew that this was tricky. Today we waited for a safety car and surprisingly nobody did a mistake and there was no safety car.

“So, it’s like this. Yes, with the benefit of hindsight, I would have changed things, but we don’t know when we are in the car at that time and I think today was the right choice.”