He leaves nothing for his opponents Max Verstappenwho takes victory in the sprint race of United States Grand Prix and sends a strong signal for the race scheduled for 9pm – Italian time – on Sunday. The world champion will in fact start from sixth position on the grid, with Ferrari Charles Leclerc that instead a potential chance of victory will be played out starting from pole position. A chance that the Monegasque driver was instead unable to make the most of at the start of the sprint, suffering Verstappen’s aggressive maneuver from second position who immediately closed the Ferrari driver’s path entering turn 1, trying to immediately create the gap that was then actually materialized. Furthermore, a direct effect was the immediate return of Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes, which took advantage of Leclerc’s difficulties and managed to overtake him, gaining second position with which he then closed the race. Bitter podium, therefore, for the number 16 of the Red team, who will have to be clear-headed in immediately putting the result of the American afternoon behind him to concentrate on the race.
“The opportunity to overtake Verstappen was there – the Monegasque commented post-race regarding the duel at the start -, but Max closed me down immediately before turn 1. We need to better understand what can be done to stay in front in the race tomorrow. We have a lot of data to analyze, with two different strategies applied on mine and Sainz’s car.” Different strategies, in fact, with the Spaniard finishing his sprint race where he started – in sixth position, almost surprisingly adopting the strategy of fitting the red tyre, the only one on the grid to make this choice. “Fitting the soft – he said – represented a risk that we had to take to analyze the data on this compound in the long run. At the start we went as expected, obtaining two positions which is what you expect from this tyre. Today was a truly harder, more than I expected because already on the fourth, fifth lap the red tire seemed to be slower than the yellow one.” A desire, that of the Maranello Scuderia, confirmed by the team principal himself, Frederic Vasseur, visibly annoyed with the performance of the two Ferraris after good qualifying sessions.
“I’m not satisfied with the race – remarked Vasseur -, we could have done a better job, but at least we have the data available on the long run with two different compounds. The choice to fit Sainz with red tires was made to understand how he would the car reacted on the pace. To win we will need to have a better pace than today and keep Verstappen behind.” Thus Vasseur, who did not hold back in defining Verstappen’s maneuver at the start against Leclerc as “aggressive to say the least”, underlining the action of the world champion who “cut off Charles’ path twice, with Hamilton who then overtook him beyond the limits of the track.”
