Ferrari explains where it went wrong: 'Lack of time and narrow pit lane'

Carlos Sainz suffered an early setback at the Dutch Grand Prix when a poor pit stop caused him to fall far back. Ferrari chief strategist Inaki Rueda explains where it went wrong at Zandvoort in his analysis on LinkedIn.

Where it went wrong for Sainz

According to Rueda, the call for Sainz to come in came very late, as it came in response to Sergio Perez's pit stop. The team also wanted to avoid an undercut by Mercedes. That one of the tyres was not ready, according to the strategist, was due to the very short time the mechanics had to respond.

"The call to the pit crew usually comes around 23 to 24 seconds [before the pit stop], but in this case, because we were reacting to Perez, it came later. We only gave our pit crew 17 seconds to react," Rueda explained. The combination of a shorter reaction time for the mechanics and the tight pit lane at Zandvoort would have meant that things then went completely wrong for Sainz's stop.

Rueda continued: "In this case, Carlos came in a bit earlier than usual. The front-left tyre fitter managed to squeeze in between the front wing and the front jack, but the rear-left tyre fitter did not manage to get by." Because there was so little room, the mechanic in question then also had to go around the entire pit crew to get to his spot.