Norris undercut may have helped Leclerc win Italian GP

Ferrari believes Charles Leclerc being undercut by Lando Norris boosted his chances to take a momentous Formula 1 victory for the team at the Italian Grand Prix.

Following an on-the-edge lap one pass by team-mate Oscar Piastri, polesitter Norris lost enough momentum to cede second place to Leclerc, who then split the McLarens during the opening stint.

On lap 15 Norris was the first of the frontrunners to pit, gaining the undercut on Leclerc to win second place back.

But with the position already lost, Leclerc protested over Ferrari pitting him the following lap instead of staying out longer, saying: “What was that? Why did we pit if we are undercut?”

Team boss Fred Vasseur explained that Ferrari wanted to stay on a similar strategy as McLaren “because we had a feeling at this stage that we had an advantage on the tyres”.

That advantage turned out to be so big that Leclerc and team-mate Carlos Sainz could actually make it to the end on a single stop.

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But by being undercut by Norris – in the knowledge that the position was gone anyway – Leclerc no longer needed to push flat out on his outlaps, which allowed the Ferrari man to bring his hard tyres up to temperature much more gradually. That turned out to be a key element in making a one-stop strategy possible.

“Everything was clear on the strategy that one stop was probably the best option, but we needed also to a kind of slow introduction, not to overpush on the first couple of laps,” Vasseur said.

The chequered flag is waved as Charles Leclerc, Ferrari SF-24, 1st position, crosses the finish line

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

“It’s true that by losing the position and not fighting you can do probably a better introduction on the second stint with the hards.

“We were really under control the first couple of laps, he was managing a lot, maybe more than the others. That’s also what paid off at the end of the race.”

In the first stint Sainz remarked that “these guys are going to struggle to make it to the end”, and the Spaniard was proven right as McLaren’s worse tyre wear locked it into a two-stopper.

According to Pirelli’s motorsport chief Mario Isola, the “gentle introduction” of the tyres was key to avoid the graining phenomenon that reduces tyre grip, and which teams had been wary of before the race.

“If you look at what happened on Friday with the long runs, for the drivers able to introduce the tyre in a gentle way, the degradation was much, much lower,” he explained.

“For the drivers instead that were pushing a lot from lap one, then the degradation was higher.

“It’s difficult to do this job during the race, because you want to keep the track position and you cannot slow down too much.

“You don’t need to slow down too much; you just pay attention not to overstress the front or the rear in order to avoid this graining to initiate.

“But I believe it was working well [for Ferrari] in the first couple of laps with the hard compound to make it last to the end.”

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