Scuderia Ferrari director Mattia Binotto has admitted mistakes were made after the Formula 1 Monaco Grand Prix. Charles Leclerc started on pole position on Sunday but finished off the podium due to the Italian team’s haphazard strategy, behind his team-mate Carlos Sainz Jr, who finished second.

Charles Leclerc finished the Monaco Grand Prix, but certainly not where he wanted to be. Having started on pole position, the driver was hoping to finally shine on home soil and finally climb onto the top step of the podium. But on Sunday, Scuderia Ferrari was scuttled. While he was in control of the race, Leclerc was asked to return to the pits to put on intermediate tyres, just after Sergio Perez. The timing was not ideal as the Red Bull driver took the opportunity to move into the lead. A few laps later, the Monegasque had to stop again to put slicks on his car. A strategy that did not pay off, as Leclerc ended up in fourth place.

“I’m disgusted. It hurts. There are a lot of races and we have the pace, but we can’t afford to finish fourth when we were six seconds ahead of second. I was managing the gap with those behind. It hurts, especially at home,” said Leclerc after the race.

“It’s normal that he is not happy” declares Binotto,

“It’s a disappointing result, I understand Charles’ disappointment, it’s normal that he’s not happy. We made some strategic mistakes and when you are in the lead and you end up fourth, something went wrong. That said, it was not easy to judge, the speed of the intermediates surprised us, we should have come in a lap earlier with Charles or stayed out, protected the position on Max, and switched to slicks straight away,” claims Binotto to the Italian press,

Charles Leclerc also had a bad day in the driver standings as Max Verstappen, who is in third place and has a nine-point lead over him. While he also had to pit to put on hard tyres, Carlos Sainz Jr. was satisfied with his race and did not wish to incriminate his team.

“It was a crazy race, but I thought we did everything we needed to do to win it. We stayed patient with the rain tyres. Then we made the decision to switch to slicks. Then I lost a lot of time behind some latecomers. If I had had a clear lap, I might have taken the lead and won. But I’m not going to complain too much”, said the Spaniard.

Charles Leclerc did not feel the same way and will have to react during the next Grand Prix in Baku, Azerbaijan, on 12 June. Last year, he started on pole position before finishing fourth. This week, history repeated itself.