F1 | Azerbaijan GP | Carlos Sainz “not happy” with P8 after a race filled with struggles
Carlos Sainz disappointment after a difficult Azerbaijan GP , in which he struggled to warm up the tyres and “a costly mistake which compromised” his“whole race.”
Tough race for Carlos Sainz in Baku, after a disappointing end to yesterday’s qualifying. "Not the race I was hoping for today. I didn’t have the same feeling with the car that I had had all weekend,” he said.
“Every time I was on cold tyres - at both starts, at the restart and after the pit stop - I struggled a lot with front locking and with the brakes. That led to a costly mistake which compromised my whole race.”
A costly mistake indeed: after coming out of the pits at lap 10, Sainz locked up and went into the runoff area at Turn 8. He managed to reverse his SF21 back onto the track, narrowly avoiding Antonio Giovinazzi, but all the way down to P15.
The Spaniard was stuck behind Giovinazzi’s Alfa Romeo for quite a few laps, before being able to overtake him and take P13 to hunt down Fernando Alonso. After the safety car following Stroll’s crash was deployed, he took on Ricciardo and Bottas.
At the restart, #Carlos55 passing RIC and BOT. He is P9 😍👏#AzerbaijanGP pic.twitter.com/VF1kqHGLk3
— Scuderia Ferrari (@ScuderiaFerrari) June 6, 2021
The session was red flagged and he ended the race in P8 after Max Verstappen’s dnf.
“In the end, I managed to get back in the points but I’m not happy with the result.”
With Charles Leclerc finishing in front of Lando Norris and Sainz leaving Ricciardo behind, Ferrari was able to go ahead of McLaren in the Constructors’ Championship. Only a small consolation for the team given the turn this race day took. But Sainz is eager to analyse what went wrong and concentrate on the next race at Paul Ricard.
“We need to understand the reasons behind those issues and try to improve for the upcoming races. We’ve got some time now to go to Maranello and work on it, so I’m sure we’ll come back stronger in France."
