Can’t be: What Sainz was told on the radio

The only thing missing is putting the famous Benny Hill song in the background. It’s like a movie. what lived Carlos Sainz this Sunday at F1 French GP 2022 in his flesh study it. Ferrari has been making a lot of mistakes this year on the wall and in the pits, something a team of Maranello’s class cannot afford. But not only that, on more than one occasion this season Carlos Sainz had to correct his own wall from his car, with less data available, while driving at 300 km/h, to avoid further damage. And what he experienced this Sunday was a huge accumulation of bullshit.

The Austrian machine hit him

The first thing to note is that Carlos Sainz lost the chance to fight hard for pole position and victory on Saturday as he had to change his engine and was penalized as a direct result of the fire he suffered in his engine in Austria two weeks ago . Because of this, he started 19th this Sunday, in a race where reliability will not be a problem, but the other failures of his team will be.

First stop: Huge mistake

The first serious error came in the ‘Safety Car’ that came from Leclerc. Sainz had to take the opportunity to make his free stop and his team again missed a bad save. This significantly delayed Sainz, who, aware of the great time lost, exited the pit lane without seeing that he had a red light, something that almost touched a Williams and earned him a 5″ penalty . That was The only mistake that Sainz could have made during the race, he did not want to lose any time after the mistake of his team, which is understandable in a moment of maximum tension.

The team is wrong when announcing a penalty

The team later announced the punishment. And here comes another incomprehensible error: “So, we have a 5 second penalty and ‘Stop and go,'” They told him on the radio. The message is incorrect because that penalty does not exist. It could be 5 seconds, or it could be 10 seconds, or it could be a ‘Stop and go’, or it could be a ‘Drive Through, etc. But the concept of ‘5 seconds and ‘Stop and go’ does not exist.

‘Stop and go’ consists of arriving in the pits, stopping for 10 seconds and exiting again without changing anything on the car. And a 5 second penalty can be served by stopping in the pits for 5 seconds to immediately take advantage and change a tire or whatever the team wants.

Imagine what Carlos might have thought when he heard such a phrase on the radio. “It’s not stop and go, it’s a 5 second penalty,” Carlos Sainz had to answer to clear the team. Unbelievable.

Maybe it’s just a misunderstanding. Perhaps the wall is not properly explained. The fact is that the pilot must give these messages without errors and in a clear and concise manner.

A lot of coming back to the topic and changing opinions

But the matter did not end there. Then came the radio debate. Sainz was hurt by Leclerc’s ‘safety car’ stopping too early when he was on the hard tire and having to do too many laps in the second half of the race on the medium tyre. He doesn’t know if he will make it to the end and the team starts discussing it with Carlos.

“We consider plan A” they told him on the radio. “Uff!, we need to slow down then”. Apparently the team suggested to Carlos to stay on the track and not stop, something logical because at Paul Ricard the pit lane was too long and at the stop approximately 28 seconds were lost. Carlos, who is fighting for the podium, can get back on track very far from third place.

Later, Carlos, without the information they had on the wall as he chased Pérez in the fight for third place, asked if Red Bull plans to change tires again and his track engineer told him that Max and Pérez would never stop again.

There Sainz clearly saw it and told the team that he would not have enough time to reach the fight for the podium if he stopped. He said he was determined. “Alright, get out,” they said to them. At that moment, Sainz knew that he was directly fighting with Pérez for the podium and instead of managing the tires he did everything and passed the Mexican with a great action. But in that intense fight, the team spoke to him again while Carlos was fighting the Mexican and they asked him to enter the pits at the completely wrong time to give an order to a driver.

“Not now!”, he repeated up to three times, in what appeared to be a new version of ‘Stop inventing’ where he had stopped his team at Silverstone. Sainz did not understand why he was called to the pits. I wanted to fight to the end, already from third place, even though I knew I would suffer from the tires at the end. He prefers that to come in and give up the podium. But Ferrari wants to stop it. “I don’t understand anything”He said on the radio that there were 5 laps to go. Although after the race he toned down his speech. And at the last stop, Ferrari lost time again. The second stop is 9.4 seconds. 5 is for the penalty and another 4.4 for the save. too.

In Monaco and Silverstone Sainz had to strengthen his wall

Mistakes piled up again for a team with Sainz already having to raise his voice to lead strategy at Monaco and Silverstone. In Monaco he refused to go in to put the intermediate tires and stayed on the track to go directly to the dry tires and that allowed him to fight for the victory. And at Silverstone he asked his team to ‘stop inventing’ when he ordered him to pull away from Leclerc before the final ‘Safety Car’ started and give the Monegasque a break. That decision gave him victory at Silverstone and yesterday, once again, the wall was too hesitant for the Spaniard.