“I’m happy to be here, third. Especially how the day started.” Carlos Sainz pointed out in the press conference of the three pilots who this Saturday reached the podium of the sprint race of Austrian F1 GP. The man from Madrid finished yesterday in third position, saving the tools from Ferrari and leading the ‘cavalino‘ while charles leclerc suffered and lived another nightmare in mixed conditions. This comparison should serve to highlight what has been achieved by Carlos. But also the mental strength he once again showed when he got out of a delicate situation in the morning to avoid starting the day off on the wrong foot.
The sprint day, with short qualifying and a 24-lap race, did not start well for Carlos. On a wet track that is gradually drying out and where it is absolutely key to be on track to gain confidence in the tricky and changing conditions, Carlos Sainz was unable to practice on the asphalt due to problems with his Ferrari’s braking system. He exited the track in the final minutes, with no time for mistakes. “Warm up, warm up,” his engineer told him over the radio. Carlos forcefully responded: “Don’t say put the warm up mode on, tell me how many laps I have”. “You have one lap left”, his engineer announced. It is played on one card.
On a changing, fine asphalt, without having been tested, on a track where the previous day it was clear with the errors of Pérez, Hamilton and half of the grid how easy it is to exceed the limits of the track of the last two corners, Sainz not can make mistakes. If he is wrong, he will end up at the tail of the grid. There, at the moment of greatest pressure, he did everything and went into Q2 with the best time. saved him. There he changed the direction of his day.
He started in 5th and went for it
So, after achieving 5th position in the ‘shootout’ classification, he wanted to attack in search of his first podium of the course, even if it was a short sleeve sprint. I want that prize. He showed that he was comfortable in the car at the start of the course and from Australia he was showing more consistency than Charles Leclerc. However, the Monegasque has been the only one to score two podium finishes to date at the Baku sprint weekend. This time, Carlos again showed his superiority over Charles in changing conditions.that the track is wet, conditions in which the Monegasque suffers greatly, without finding an explanation for his lack of rhythm.
Carlos pushed, he didn’t have a problem with the difficult start, he took advantage of Norris going wide at turn 3 to win a placestick with ‘Checo’ Pérez until the Mexican goes hulkenberghe lost no time to Nico and overtook him in the following lap, and in third position, having to stay on the track with intermediate tires with the asphalt dry, there was nothing he could do to catch Nico. ‘Czech’. He took a hopeful third place for granted due to the good speed shown and that should serve as a good push for what is to come.
“I’m very confident”
The Spaniard, aware of the difficulty of what he achieved, did not hesitate to highlight how different his day would have been had he not known how to react in key moments. “I’m happy to be here, third. Especially with how the day started, I couldn’t do the first few laps in Q1 and I had to do a crazy lap at the end of that Q1 with mixed conditions and I had to push. And since then, I have a lot of confidence in the car.”
“I also did a couple of good laps in Q3 on medium used tires and today I flowed easily in that sprint. I started well, I kept my pace, I followed ‘Checo’, I tried to get close to him, but with the degradation and the dirty air I couldn’t push through that intermission. But the rhythm was good and it was a good day”, he commented at the press conference.
“In difficult conditions, it was the first time we used the intermediates and you don’t know what to expect from the balance of the car and its balance, and experimenting during a race is not easy. It seems that there we had decent speed, even though I was struggling at high speed. But I have managed to recover some rhythm and I would like to stay close to ‘Checo’ but it was a bit too fast for us”, he said as he got off his car
“Maybe we were faster, but since the middle of the race, when we overtook Hülkenberg, I gained a bit of confidence but I already damaged my tires and I couldn’t catch the ‘Czech’. However, it was a good result, a good day for me and we will try to do it again tomorrow,” added the Spaniard at the foot of the track, clarifying afterwards that he could not lose less time by overtaking Hülkenberg to follow ‘Checo’ .
“I think I overtook Nico on the first lap when I had a chance. When ‘Checo’ passed him, I got ahead of him on the next lap. He was very fast at the start and got the tires down faster than us. But when I passed Nico, my tires were in the best window and I had a rhythm and ‘Checo’ was too far away and we couldn’t catch up with him. Overall, it was a solid race. It’s easy to make mistakes and it’s the first time we’ve used the intermediates all weekend and you never know what you’re going to find.”, completed. It’s easy to make mistakes. Charles promised them (12th). Not Carlos.
Source: La Verdad
I’m Rose Herman and I work as an author for Today Times Live. My expertise lies in writing about sports, a passion of mine that has been with me since childhood. As part of my job, I provide comprehensive coverage on everything from football to tennis to golf.
