Charles Leclerc appeared confused by his team’s strategic choices after the end of yesterday’s race in Las Vegas, commenting that “I didn’t let anything go to waste”, after a solid performance for him.
The Monegasque started the race in 9th place, managing to reach 6th place at the end. It was an aggressive strategy that brought him, in fact, only slightly close to reaching 4th!
Leclerc was ultimately limited by the undercut made by Kimi Antonelli and Oscar Piastri, to which his team’s pit wall did not respond with a corresponding decision. Thus, the driver was called upon to fight with both of his competitors on the track. Ultimately, due to the poor top speed of his SF-25, he was unable to overcome their obstacle, since a higher downforce setup had been chosen by the Scuderia.
This left Leclerc unable to take anything away from what had been a good performance with a fairly uncompetitive car. In fact, after the McLarens’ double elimination, the driver could have even made it to the podium.
After the race, the driver was asked if he considered the result he achieved as something positive, especially after the difficult qualifying. There, he openly expressed his doubts about his team’s strategy.
“No, I don’t see it very positively. It’s a 6th place, it still irritates me when I finish only 6th when I started 9th”, commented the Monegasque.
“On the other hand, if I look at my race, it was a bit crazy. I had to take huge risks on the overtaking because we were too slow on the straights. From that point of view, it was a fun race, but I never understood our pitstop choices. It seems like we lost a few places. So we will look at it again to see if there was anything we could have done better in that area.”
