A bitter ending
Carlos Sainz in the final part of the 2023 F1 championship he came to occupy fourth position in the Drivers' standings, a result that would have been the best in his career for the Spaniard after the fifth places obtained in 2021 and 2022, again at the wheel of Ferrari. In Las Vegas, however, the unfortunate manhole cover that knocked out his SF-23 during PL1 prevented the Spaniard from exploiting the competitiveness of the Red on the Strip due to the penalty on the starting grid. Then in Abu Dhabi, in PL2 Sainz spun at the start of the session in a weekend that didn't improve, indeed, in Qualifying he even got eliminated in Q1.
“In the last two race weekends everything that could go wrong did go wrong – the analysis of Carlos Sainz interviewed by the Spanish newspaper AS – there was a lot of bad luck. We immediately understood that the hard compound was not competitive. Two weekends full of bad luck, imperfect laps and errors during execution. In any case, my season was solid, I improved a lot in some aspects and I will take all this experience with me into 2024.”
According to Sainz, 2023 is not his best season in F1: “In 2019 I did better. There are some features of this new generation of ground effect F1 cars that I struggle to digest. For sure 2023 was a better year than 2022, I have to continue to improve. The placement in the standings, be it fourth, fifth, sixth or seventh, doesn't matter much, it doesn't change my life. What matters are the steps forward we have made during 2023 at team level, if we continue like this we will be able to fight in 2024.”
#Manhole #cover #accident #bitter #Sainz #wrong
