Carlos Sainz is rather saddened when he shows up to comment on the fourth place obtained at the Mexican Grand Prix.
In fact, starting from the front row, the Spaniard had very different objectives for the race in which he was alongside his polesitting teammate, Charles Leclerc.
But if it was very hard to hope to keep the usual Max Verstappen behind us, the blow that hurt the most was suffering a comeback from Lewis Hamilton, who with Mercedes climbed from 6th to 2nd place, even overtaking Leclerc in the second part of the race.
“It wasn’t a good race, but we clearly saw that we were missing something here compared to Red Bull and Mercedes”, explains Sainz as he got out of his Ferrari, after having closed the door to the other Mercedes for several laps, the one driven by George Russell .
“In Qualifying we took the Pole Position giving 0″3 to Mercedes, in the race it was Mercedes who gave it to us on the lap and therefore it becomes difficult to keep up with them. With Russell we succeeded, but with Hamilton it was impossible; Unfortunately that’s how it went.”
Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images
Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB19, Charles Leclerc, Ferrari SF-23, Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes F1 W14, George Russell, Mercedes F1 W14, Carlos Sainz, Ferrari SF-23, Daniel Ricciardo, AlphaTauri AT04
Following this, Sainz also highlighted the difficulties in driving his SF-23 well while trying to obtain the performance that was missing.
“For me the first stint with the medium was difficult, also because it was already damaged from the formation lap. Furthermore, I had to lift my foot a lot because the engine temperatures were rising.”
“In the second stint we corrected the balance and with the hard tire we were a little faster, but nothing special.”
“The problem is that Mercedes manages to make the tires last a little longer than us, so they can afford to fit the mediums at the end, like today, while we wouldn’t be able to finish the race if we did.”
“They have a flexibility in this aspect that we don’t have, we are trying to improve the characteristics of the car for next year in this sense. This year it is like this now and we know that we are not like Mercedes”.
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