Despite Scuderia Ferrari securing their fourth FIA Formula 1 World Championship double podium finish of the season at the Singapore Grand Prix, Mattia Binotto has admitted that he leaves the Marina Bay Street Circuit with a sense of disappointment after the team failed to secure the race victory.
Charles Leclerc failed to convert pole position into the race win for the seventh time this season after a slow start from the Monegasque driver off the line allowed Sergio Perez to reach turn one in the lead of the race.
Leclerc was largely able to stick with the pace being set by the Oracle Red Bull Racing driver out front but was unable to put himself in a position where an overtake would have been possible. By the time of the changeover point onto the slick tyres, Ferrari and Leclerc opted to do the opposite to Perez, which would see Leclerc bring his F1-75 in for a set of medium tyres the lap before Perez.
A slow out-lap from Leclerc, who was struggling to generate any grip on his new set of medium tyres, would allow Perez to rejoin the grid still in first place. Even with the late threat of a penalty to Sergio Perez for a safety car infringement, which the Mexican was later awarded a five-second time penalty for, Leclerc was unable to pull close enough to Perez that the penalty awarded to the Mexican did not affect the final standings of the race.
Credit: Octane Photographic Ltd
For Carlos Sainz, the Spaniard struggled considerably in his first stint of the race on the intermediate tyres and found himself more focused on keeping Lewis Hamilton at bay in fourth place than attempting to join the fight at the front. Hamilton’s mistake which saw him head nose first into the barriers at turn seven, allowed Sainz the necessary respite to get to his second stint still in third place.
Sainz’s pace was considerably better on the medium tyre but still found himself a touch off the pace being set by Perez and Leclerc and would come for a third-place finish to give Ferrari their fourth double podium finish of the season.
While disappointed to not claim the race victory, Binotto was still pleased with the team’s response in Singapore across the weekend following a tough triple-header for the Maranello-based team.
“We are disappointed with the result of today’s race. It’s been quite a while that we have been chasing a win and today we came close. Having said that, we picked up a good number of points thanks to a second and a third place. Overall, it was a difficult weekend to manage, but the car worked well in both the wet and the dry.
Here in Singapore, Ferrari showed that it had got over the difficulties of Spa and Zandvoort and we were able to get our performance back on track, which bodes well for the coming races.”