Sainz on Ferrari's furious Las Vegas GP: 'We didn't execute'
F1 News
Carlos Sainz eventually finished in third place at the Las Vegas Grand Prix. It was an interesting Saturday for Ferrari, as Charles Leclerc was also not satisfied with his result and the radio was on when he commented angrily on what happened. Sainz reacted to these incidents after the race.
During his second shift, Carlos Sainz voiced his opinion for multiple laps that he wants to enter the pit lane. Once Ferrari agreed, the pit crew was not ready, therefore, the Spaniard had to continue.
"We just simply didn't execute in general. We just didn't execute a very good race. I think we stayed out one lap too late on mediums, two laps too late on hards. And by the time I was going to pit, we had this messy radio communication in the pit entry, which probably made me lose that lap that I was completely grained," the Spanish driver began.
Sainz believes they did not maximise their points as he could have ended up battling Lewis Hamilton for P2. "Plus, the two or three seconds that I lost in the pit entry, that means a lot of race time that maybe would have meant we could have ended up fighting Lewis. But it just shows that in this sport, you need to do things perfectly, week in, week out."
He then underlined: "We've been doing things really well in strategy and on race management all year around. But today wasn't our day. We just didn't do things well and we will have to learn from it and make sure we come back in Qatar stronger."
On getting past Leclerc
After Leclerc left the pit lane, his race engineer, Bryan Bozzi let him know Sainz will not attack him. However, Sainz overtook his teammate, and finished in P3. He believes the situation happened because of the aforementioned problems. "As I was on grained tyres, I asked the team two or three times to box me, to get me out of the way, and get me a new set of Hards to make sure that I wasn't losing a lot of race time by having to let Charles by [before the second pit stop] and then having to fight Lewis at the same time."
"For some reason we didn't box and I ended up having to let Charles by a lap later than was planned and losing a lot of race time. And by the time I was going to box, then we didn't even box. So I guess he's not happy, but I'm also not happy with the way things were handled at the time," he continued.
Sainz then shared the entire team are not satisfied with this outcome. "I think no one's happy today in the team because we all expected a bit more. I'm on the podium, so at least I got that for the team. But at the same time, I don't think we could have finished much better than P3 and P4 today," the Spaniard concluded in Las Vegas.
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