F1 | Sainz: “The accident? It wasn’t my fault, Perez had space”

The final laps of the Azerbaijan GP were perhaps among the most chaotic of the entire season. If for much of the second stint the battle for victory between Oscar Piastri and Charles Leclerc made the race exciting, in the final laps the situation changed, with the Monegasque increasingly struggling with the management of the rear tyres and the chronic lack of grip.

This decline meant that Carlos Sainz was also able to get back into the game, joining the fight for the podium after recovering many seconds on the leading group thanks to careful management of the tire and the many duels in front of him. Thus the fight for second place turned into a three-way battle, with the two Ferraris and Sergio Perez’s Red Bull as protagonists.

A battle that, however, saw only one of these three cars reach the finish line, as both the Red of Sainz and the Red Bull of Perez ended up against the wall on the penultimate lap, with a contact that is still causing discussions to understand the responsibilities. It all started when, one lap from the end of the race, the Mexican tried to attack Leclerc in turn 1 with the DRS, but was unable to overtake, as the Monegasque defended his position well on the dirtiest line.

This in turn caused Perez to end up on a wider line on the exit and through Turn 1, giving Sainz, who was immediately behind him, the chance to move in and gain a podium position. In the next turn, Turn 2, Sainz managed to get alongside his teammate Leclerc on the outside, who in the meantime had tried to protect the inside by lifting his foot off the accelerator first to close and take the apex of the corner, so as not to be penalised too much on the exit.

In fact, therefore, Sainz found himself on a slightly wider and dirtier line, while behind him Perez was able to better prepare the curve and the exit, so as to be able to try to surprise Sainz on the extension that leads to the next braking point. It is precisely at this point that the two came into contact: on the one hand the Spaniard believes that Perez still had a lot of space available, so he could have moved further to the left, while the Mexican is of the opposite opinion, maintaining that the Ferrari driver ran into him.

Although the intervention of the medical car was necessary due to the high force of the impact recorded by the control unit, fortunately both drivers are fine and did not suffer any consequences from the accident. “I’m fine, but it was a big accident, unfortunately I hit the barrier on the concrete wall,” Sainz said as he began to explain the dynamics of the contact.

“Honestly, I was coming up really fast behind Charles and Checo, I had also saved my tyres, and I managed to pass Checo while he was fighting with Charles. We came out of the second corner and at that point I kept my line, which is the racing line, I didn’t do any strange or wrong manoeuvres. But for some reason, which I still don’t understand, we collided. I think Checo still had a lot of space on the left,” added the Ferrari driver, underlining how Perez actually had some margin on the left to move wide and avoid contact.

The accident between Pérez and Sainz

“I didn’t make any strange moves, but I think that’s how racing is. Sometimes you do 48 laps without any problems and then you get two or three laps to go and things like that happen.”

Coming out of that curve, drivers tend to move to the left, especially because the track itself is designed so that there is a widened section that allows for greater speed during the transition. However, that widened section lasts only a few meters and then tends to narrow, until it is almost at the level of the white line. An aspect that Sainz also wanted to underline in his analysis, maintaining that he actually moved to the left, but to follow what, from his point of view, is the ideal trajectory.

“I followed my normal racing line and the line that we all do on every lap of this track, exiting at the second corner, we always go a little to the left, but without doing strange or irregular maneuvers. Charles in front of me also goes to the left, I followed his slipstream,” added the Spaniard. On the contrary, Perez more or less maintained his set line on the exit and it is precisely on this aspect that Sainz focused.

Regardless of the accident, Sainz had a two-faced race: after a less than stellar first part of the Grand Prix, in which he was even overtaken by Perez at the start, the Spaniard showed excellent pace in the second part of the race, taking advantage of the duels at the front.

“I was very fast, honestly. I lost a lot of time in the pit stop and on the re-entry lap, because I was in the phase of the medium tyre wear, so I accumulated about ten seconds of delay. Today, however, I was the fastest and I was fighting for second place, so it is disappointing to go home with zero points. I had a very good pace, so it is extremely disappointing. Especially on a track where I am usually slow, today I was very fast, so it is disappointing.”