F1 | Sainz: “Leclerc deserves the victory, I’m happy for the team”

Charles Leclerc finally broke the spell, achieving victory in his beloved Monaco. Overall, however, there is a Ferrari that brings home not only the success with the Monegasque, but also a double podium thanks to the third place achieved with Carlos Sainz in a particular weekend, which started subdued due to the difficulties in finding the setup ideal, but which ended with another trophy to add to the Cavallino collection.

Paradoxically, however, after just a few corners the fate of Sainz’s third place could have been completely different. In fact, in an attempt to overtake Oscar Piastri at the start in turn one, the Spaniard came into contact with the bottom of the Australian’s McLaren, suffering a puncture which led him to park his car in turn four without direction.

Taking advantage of the red flag caused by the accident at the back of the group between the two Haas cars and Sergio Perez, which led to a long suspension to clear the track and repair the barriers, Sainz however managed to slowly return to the pits, where he was replace the tyres. With the ranking reset by the race direction, who restored the positions on the starting grid, the Cavallino driver returned to third place, thus being able to dream of the podium again.

“Obviously it wasn’t a good feeling during the first lap, which then immediately turned into a positive feeling when I was brought back to third position,” commented Sainz after the end of the race, speaking of the sensations he experienced after a very strong first lap. chaotic.

From then on, it was a waiting race, with an extremely slow pace to keep the group in a certain window. The basic idea was not to allow Norris to stop to fit the medium tire in the second part of the race with which he would have had more grip, so with both Leclerc and Sainz Ferrari tried to lap with high times to keep the compact group, enough to not guarantee McLaren the window to make the pit stop.

“For the rest, the race pace was good, as we expected, it was simply impossible to pass here in Monaco. But I’m extremely happy to see Charles win his home Grand Prix, the way he drove all weekend and sharing the podium with him in third place is something fantastic for the whole team, I think they deserve it. I think we are improving weekend after weekend,” added Sainz.

At the end, when Norris’ pit stop was no longer a threat, Sainz tried to get closer to Piastri to try to put pressure, but the Australian held his nerve and took home second place: “Once I was sure that Lando didn’t have the gap to stop and attack me at the end, I concentrated on doing fast laps to try to put some pressure on Piastri, perhaps to lead him to make a mistake knowing that it was impossible to overtake here. I saw that he lost the rear on a couple of occasions, but it wasn’t enough for him to overtake, ”said the Spaniard.