F1NAC wrote: ↑16 Sep 2024, 08:50
A lots of comments pointing to Leclerc's defense on Piastri where he dropped the lead. Well, had Charles went defending inside I doubt he would have much traction on colder tyres out of T1. This one is difficult to swallow. The car was great on mediums. Had we pitted right after Perez, we would be writting different things.
In hindsight undercutting would have been the move. Piastri didn't have the pace to challenge him on the in-lap and given how well Sainz's tyres held up when not running within 1 second of the car in front for 30 laps, a small tyre delta for Piastri likely wouldn'thave meant much in the end.
Frankly it's a miracle that Leclerc could stay so close for so long before his tyres fell off. The Ferrari had disgustingly good tyre wear on both compounds, even if they were just incredible on the mediums.
That said. This race was really a shame and Leclerc aboslutely had the fastest car in clean air. He was also just incredibly unlucky that he was sandwiched by Piastri and Perez so he couldn't just drop back into cleaner air and get ready for a serious push to retake the lead.