“I’m happy. If they had told me yesterday that, after struggling against the McLarens and Mercedes in the sprint, we would fight with them, I would have been happy.” This is the summary of the day for Carlos Sainz, who finished just a few seconds away from a podium which, after what was seen in the sprint, realistically seemed out of reach, not only for the Spaniard, but also for the person who started from pole, his teammate. Charles Leclerc team.
During the long-distance sprint, all the Red’s limitations in tire management had emerged, but Sunday’s race reserved some more uncertainty, putting the teams faced with choices that in some way impacted the scenarios and strategies in time. real. Ferrari had in fact started with the idea of focusing on the single stop, a tactic which, at least from their calculations, should have worked, allowing them to have a competitive advantage over those who had instead chosen to make two pit stops.
A plan that was then implemented with Leclerc, who actually followed the planned strategy, while things followed a different trend for the Monegasque’s teammate, who moved to the two stops. After a good sprint when the lights went out, Sainz managed to overtake Lewis Hamilton during the first lap, at least before suffering a counterattack a few laps later. Sainz however attempted to maintain the Englishman’s pace to remain in the DRS zone, which however led him to force himself on the front tires with a particularly accentuated degradation which made, in fact, the one-stop tactic essentially impossible to implement in the his case.
Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images
Lando Norris, McLaren MCL60, Charles Leclerc, Ferrari SF-23, Carlos Sainz, Ferrari SF-23, Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes F1 W14, Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB19
However, the real-time choice to move towards the two pit stops proved to be the right one, because in reality the hard tire did not guarantee the expected performances, proving to be slower than expected. This put into crisis those who were on a single stop, like Leclerc himself, or those who had two sets of whitewall tyres, like Norris, who in fact finished with a lead of a few seconds over the Spaniard’s Ferrari. Good tire management and a positive pace allowed Sainz to recover up to fourth place, bringing home important points for both the drivers’ and manufacturers’ classifications.
“It seemed like a good race, solid as far as I’m concerned. I made a good start. But in the first stint I think I was too optimistic in trying to stay in the DRS of Max and Lewis, they were flying. Having attempted to stay behind them in the DRS zone I destroyed my front tyres, which pushed me onto a two-stop strategy. However, the tactic with two pit stops worked well, in the other two stints I was able to manage the tires well, I made my pace with the medium and hard tires, also trying to recover from Lando”, explained the Ferrari driver.
“There was one lap where I was a second faster and I thought that, by maintaining that pace, maybe I could catch Lando. But after some battles, Lando recovered the tires, cooled them and was able to improve his pace.”
“We couldn’t have done more than this, we made all the right choices, showing good pace in the second and third stints. In the end we finished close to a podium that seemed very difficult yesterday.”
Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images
Carlos Sainz, Ferrari SF-23
Sainz believes he did a good job in terms of tire management especially in the second and third stints, after changing strategy by switching to two stops. More generally, according to the Spaniard the positive aspect is the pace shown in the race, while there is something to review about qualifying, an aspect in which he feels he struggled not only in Austin, but also in the last few rounds.
This last aspect was undoubtedly also affected by the fact that he did not have time to perfect the set-up towards his preferences due to the limited time available before Parc Fermé. In this case, the difficulties on the bumps put Sainz in crisis, especially in terms of confidence in the fast sections, an aspect that he paid for on the flying lap. “I think that in the race yesterday I already did a good job with the soft [in termini di gestione], over the long distance I had a good pace this weekend, while we have to see something in qualifying because my last qualifyings were nothing special. The race pace is certainly solid, today I pushed hard and also managed good tire management.”
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