So che il tema appassiona.

Ecco allora la versione di Inaki Rueda su quanto accaduto a Montecarlo domenica scorsa.

RUEDA SCRIPSIT

We came into this race with very high expectations. We expected a very competitive car and on Saturday we ascertained that was the case. A front row lock-out in Monte Carlo, something we’re very proud of, something that is very difficult to obtain.
Came Sunday
The race got delayed a full hour and we actually started to shift our focus rather than all the pre-race dry plans that we had, we needed to start thinking about how we could manage a wet race.
With Carlos we had a very good race. He started P2 and after the first round of stops he found himself leading the race.
Although our initial plan was to try and cover Perez, we had the piece of mind to realise it was not going to work. And at the last second we told Carlos to stay out and he duly did so.
Furthermore, when the time was right we judged that the track could be quicker on dry tyres and Carlos was the first car on the lead path to stop for dry. This gave him a definitive advantage. Unfortunately, he came out behind Latifi and this cost him over three seconds.
Had he not been blocked by Latifi, we are quite confident he would have won the race
We’ve spoken about the positives. Now let’s go over the negatives. With Charles we made two mistakes. The first one was to cover Perez.
While with Carlos we realized very late on his lap that we could not cover Perez, with Charles we had a big gap and we thought we could cover Perez. At the start of lap 18 Charles had over ten seconds advantage on Perez and we thought this advantage would shrink because Perez on Intermediate tyres was much faster than Charles on the Extremes. We had looked at other people, we had the live data from the cars and we thought that this gap would shrink from around ten seconds to maybe five, four, three seconds at the worst.
As we were coming in we saw the ten seconds gap shrinking: seven, six, five, four. As Charles was coming through this window, the last timing reference we had indicated that he would come out one second ahead of Perez.
What we did not expect was Perez to go nine seconds faster overall in that lap.
Because of this we lost the race with Charles.
The second mistake we made with Charles was a gap mistake again. We wanted to pit both cars onto dry tyres.
On lap 21 we thought the track was good for dry tyres. At the same time we were bringing Carlos in to try to keep the lead, we thought “Let’s bring Charles to try to undercut Perez so we can finish P1 and P2”. As we were coming in, we were looking at our tools and our gaps. The gap between our cars was 5 seconds. It was time for a “doppio”, a double pit stop.
A comfortable “doppio” is done with 6 seconds in between the cars but we thought 5 and a half seconds might be enough.
As the cars got closer and closer to pit entry the gap was narrowed and in the pit entry the gap was only 3 and a half seconds.
We made a last second attempt to try and tell Charles to stay out but it was too late. He had already veered into the pit lane.
In this “doppio” Charles lost two seconds. This was crucial. Why?
This is what allowed Verstappen to come out ahead of Charles a lap later.
We come away from Monaco with a bittersweet taste in our mouth with some very good things and we did other things we’re not so proud of. We come back to the factory, we analyse what we did right, what we did wrong, we update our tools, our procedures and we make sure we come back stronger from this experience.