“The surprise is most of all Pierre” – Ferrari duo Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz finished P5 and P6 respectively behind AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly in the Mexican GP.
Ferrari overtook McLaren in the constructors’ standings but failed to do so against AlphaTauri on the track. All due to the brilliance of Pierre Gasly, after teammate Yuki Tsunoda suffered a DNF and without points, yet again.
Charles Leclerc tried his best to overtake the Frenchman, but Gasly was an equal match for him. Despite their ‘win’ vs McLaren, Leclerc is not too happy with the result, suggesting Ferrari expected much more from the weekend.
“When we put the hard tyre on, I struggled especially in the first twenty laps, I never saw the front left tyre in that condition and I struggled a lot.
“Carlos struggled a bit less so we did the first swap to have the chance to pass Pierre, we didn’t manage to do that, so we did again the swap at the end of the race.
“In the end, we’re never satisfied this year, apart from Monaco and the qualifying at Baku maybe when we fought for the victory.
“But it’s true we expected a bit more from this weekend. In my opinion the surprise is most of all Pierre, because he went very fast also in the race. So that was a bad surprise. But on the medium tyres we went fast, we have to understand what we did wrong on the hard tyres.”
🏁 #MexicoGP 🏁
A good haul of points for the team 💪@Charles_Leclerc ➡️ P5 @Carlossainz55 ➡️ P6#essereFerrari 🔴 pic.twitter.com/ywYNGtDMag— Scuderia Ferrari (@ScuderiaFerrari) November 7, 2021
‘Mr. Consistent’ Carlos Sainz finished his favourite P6
Carlos Sainz had qualified ahead of his teammate but found himself following Leclerc on the track. Considering he was lapping faster times, Ferrari issued team orders to Leclerc to let Sainz through in his pursuit of Gasly.
It did not work though, Gasly’s Honda engine on point in Mexico. Subsequently, Ferrari decided to swap places again, and Sainz finished P6.
“We had a similar or faster pace than Gasly’s but I found myself a bit behind and I had to make a comeback a bit.
“I was very fast today, very fast all weekend, so I’m happy from that side, but maybe we missed beating AlphaTauri.
“We expected to be ahead of AlphaTauri at the beginning of the weekend. But they proved to be very fast, they’ve been very fast today, with the pace we were equal, maybe a bit better because I was catching him [Gasly] before letting Charles past.
“But on this track, if you are ahead after the first corner, then it’s really hard to beat you.”
