Carlos Sainz spoke to the press after the Las Vegas F1 GP. The Madrilenian finished third, behind Lewis Hamilton, in a race marked by disorder in the Ferrari team’s strategy, which kept him out when the driver was in the pit lane to enter. The Spanish driver explained what happened and commented that it would not have changed the result because “a third place was the most we could do”.
“We didn’t have a good day. P3 was all we could do. The Mercedes were flying today. We didn’t have a good race. We had graining issues with the medium and with the first hard. Then, in the last difficult period, I managed to correct it. I changed several things in the driving and steering wheel settings which seemed to have helped and we were able to finish the race decently. But we didn’t have what it took to win today,” said Carlos Sainz when asked about his feelings after the race.
Concerning the disorder in the strategy, the 55 He explained the following: “I saw that with the first stint in mediums I did well and was able to overtake Charles, but we both went very far behind, with the second stint in tough, he did better than me. When I saw what was going to happen to me, I asked the team to pit me to get out of their way. In the end, I didn’t make it to the pits, the lap I was going to do they stopped me from entering… We all got involved and we didn’t have a good race. It’s time to learn from this. Between the third and the fourth, things wouldn’t have changed much.
When asked where the opportunity to fight for victory was lost, Carlos Sainz was clear: “In the rhythm. When a driver who started tenth finishes second, it’s because he has more pace than us. George, in the first stint, gave us an easy 6 or 8 seconds. In this way, it is impossible to win. Yes, it’s true that in our race, if we had stopped a lap earlier with the hard gear, we would not have had the mess at the pit entrance. That’s four or five seconds, which I think is what I finished behind Hamilton, but behind, not in front.
Sainz congratulates Verstappen
Carlos visited Max Verstappen for his fourth world title and had this to say about his former Toro Rosso teammate: “First of all, congratulations, because you have reached a big milestone. It has been running very well for several years in a row, at a very high level. He deserves the World Cup. “He knew how to take advantage of the dominant car at the start, he knew how to manage a less good car towards the end of the season and he deserves the title.”
Finally, the Spaniard declared that nothing has changed between yesterday and today: “Nothing has changed. Yesterday we didn’t know who would be the fastest, because there were no long runs, there was no data. And today it is clear that Mercedes dominated and won the game. I wanted to win the race, but I didn’t know if I was going to be fast or if the Mercedes were going to be faster. Simply put, the car, for whatever reason, generated a lot of front graining today. With so much front graining, it was very difficult to attack. We drove every lap saving a lot of tires and we couldn’t reach the pace we wanted.
