It certainly wasn't a weekend bubbly, but not so disastrous. Ferrari bids farewell to the Japanese GP with the fourth place for Leclerc and sixth for Sainz. A result that allows the red to gain four points at the expense of Mercedes for second place in the constructors' championship, to be considered - even more so following Red Bull's title victory - the real seasonal goal.
Ferrari, Leclerc couldn't have done more in Japan
From the Japanese GP Ferrari demonstrates that the work carried out during the season on the SF-23 was not only there, but also effective. The great fear of tire degradation no longer affected the car, with Leclerc commenting after the race: “Degradation problems? No, we didn't have any on this track all weekend”. News that made the difference in allowing the Monegasque to remain in fourth place in the standings, also because clearly nothing more could have been done. Although the degradation problem, in fact, is much less present, Ferrari did not reach the podium in Japan not due to errors in strategy or by the drivers, but simply because the SF-23, compared to the McLaren, he didn't have any. The Red team was lapping on average +0.5s from the papaya team, real second force on track for the entire weekend.
Sainz sixth: race not perfect
If everything went well for Leclerc, that's the matter Sainz it's different. The Spaniard had managed - following the disasters committed by Perez, who was forced to retire - to climb to fifth position. The one who tricked the Spanish driver was Lewis Hamilton who on lap 34 chose to return to the pits and execute the undercut against him. Sainz, as soon as he heard the news, did not want to respond immediately to the Mercedes driver, but he did so after four laps, definitively losing his position. A decision that Sainz wanted to explain like this: “I tried to lengthen my stint to have better tires at the end and I pushed hard to close the gap with Mercedes. Unfortunately, today the race was a couple of laps too short for me".
The only flaw on Sunday
A choice, that of Sainz, which in the end did not reward him, without forgetting his own: "I was a bit sacrificed” admitted in the post GP. A statement that is not very suitable for Ferrari at the moment, which has one great objective: reach second place in the constructors' category and, to do so, he will need both drivers, without, as some statements may suggest, sacrificing one in each race.
