Ferrari team boss, Mattia Binotto explains why his team refused to give way to Charles Leclerc's pleas and order Carlos Sainz to yield position.

While Red Bull was enjoying its only little intra-team melodrama, Ferrari looked to be following suit, with Leclerc twice calling on his team to ask for Sainz to make way.

However, the Monegasque, who has had a pretty torrid weekend and is battling Sergio Perez for runner-up spot in the championship, had his calls ignored. Indeed, his request wasn't even mentioned to his teammate.

"I don't normally ask these type of things," insisted Leclerc at race end, "but obviously we had this discussion prior to the race. So that's why I asked about it.

"But for some reason we changed our mind on that," he added. "I don't know yet the reason and hopefully we will be quick enough in Abu Dhabi to get that second place. I just hope we will be lacking that second place for three points or something like that."

"Swapping the two cars on the last straight was tricky because Charles had got Fernando and Max just behind," explained Binotto. "So certainly it could have been tricky and somehow dangerous.

"But more than that, we knew that we were under investigation for what happened behind the Safety Car with Tsunoda," he added. "We were cleared by race control at the time so we were quite, let me say, comfortable, but without having a conclusion on that matter it would have been risky.

"A 5s penalty, for example, would mean that Carlos would have been losing more than one position. So for the Constructors' Championship it was certainly better to stick with the positions and the gaps on track."

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READERS COMMENTS

1. Posted by Pavlo, 14/11/2022 16:36

"@Endre - totally agree. Max was not fighting for anything and should have just given back that place, while Carlos had a solid race and well fought podium and a cup for it, it’s note some useless points.
From team relationships position also was better for Max to give place and for Ferrari to let Carlos take his. Glad for Ferrari they did it right."

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2. Posted by Endre, 14/11/2022 12:58

"The answer should have been that a meaningless second place in the championship doesn't carry as much value as a podium. It would have been extremely unfair to Carlos to swap them around."

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"Too tricky" to swap cars, claims Binotto

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