Cruel outcome for Sainz: “It wasn’t a good end to the year for me”

Carlos Sainz He faced the final race of the course tied on points with Fernando Alonso in fourth place in F1 World Cupwith a 5 point advantage over a Norris that needs to be competitive Abu Dhabi and 12 points behind his teammate Charles Leclerc. He would have reached this final event with plenty of points to spare had it not been for a poorly arranged sewer cover in Las Vegas that eliminated any chance of fighting to win the penultimate event of the year. He wanted to make up for the last race, but everything went wrong. For his part, he was uncomfortable and out of rhythm. But he was not accompanied by a bad team strategy in Q1 which caused him to make his decisive lap in traffic and classify 16th.

And this Sunday, he went from 4th place in the World Championship to 7th after a race in which he lacked speed, but also, the strategy chosen did not seem to be the best, as he started the race with the hard rubber that never worked all the time. the year. . The last two races were made Carlos lost a huge opportunity to achieve his best result in an F1 World Championship, fourth place overall which means a lot, not just to overtake Leclerc for the second time in 3 years. Also because of how he achieved it.

At the start of the course, Carlos seemed more comfortable in the car after his difficult adaptation to the single-seater regulations released last year. And on most weekends he is better at racing. For most of the course he guided the team in their work to find the right settings for the car. He took pole at Monza and achieved the Ferrari podium there, perfectly withstanding Leclerc’s final harassment. made another pole in Singapore and achieved the only non-Red Bull victory all year at Marina Bay. He was ahead of Charles all year at the World Cup. But it is not enough.

In Las Vegas and Brazil, Charles’ excellent performance, combined with Carlos’ bad luck in the American event and his speed in this final event, resulted in a brutal outcome for Carlos. which undermines their work and their consistent performance throughout the course.

“It was not a good end to the season for me. From Las Vegas, these last two races didn’t go as I expected and as I wanted. And the truth is that we lost it in the first stint, on the hard tire, which did not develop and the tire did not stop what we expected to stop. And the truth is, we worked a lot on that tire,” he commented on ‘DAZN F1’, hurt by what happened.

“All year, every time we put hard tires in the first stint, it went bad for us. And now it happened to us again. That’s something that in our car I don’t know why it’s happening to us, we can’t do what others are doing and we have to analyze the reason. And honestly, once we lost that first stint, there wasn’t much to fight for,” he added about the chosen strategy.

“When the first stint didn’t work and we were out of points, Our only option to reach the points was for a ‘Safety Car’ to come out, and we were left a bit to see if the ‘Safety Car’ came out to help us. And not yet. Obviously it didn’t work. “We tried something that didn’t happen, we tried something that usually takes a chance on luck, but where it went wrong was in the first stint,” he added.

However, Carlos Sainz is committed to keeping his head up and looking at the many positive things he has achieved this year. Of course, starting this Monday.

“There are a lot of positive things that are very difficult to think about now, because two very difficult races for me, nothing went the way I wanted.. So it’s hard to look at the positive right now, but When I fall asleep and wake up tomorrow in a pretty good mood I will look at the positives, which I’m sure there are.”, concluded the native of Madrid.