After his departures in Melbourne and in qualifying and the race at Imola, Carlos Sainz had to accept the next setback in Miami. The Ferrari driver continued his series of departures and threw his car into the barriers in the afternoon’s second practice session. He admits: “The car still surprises me. I’m not beating about the bush.”
“There are still a few things that are out of my control that surprise me. And once I get a grip on them and learn them, I can be fast on every lap,” emphasizes the Spaniard.
Because he sees his speed on the new track positively until the accident: “The pace is there, I’m pretty fast. But of course it’s disappointing because you don’t want to start a weekend like that.”
The accident itself was quite hard. Sainz lost the car on the approach to Turn 14 and spun before hitting the wall. “I hit the wall at the most unfavorable point, because there was no Tecpro barrier there,” he says. “I’m totally into a concrete wall, which felt pretty tough even at my speed.”
“So the car is quite damaged, which gives everyone a tough Friday night. That’s not ideal,” said Sainz.
One circumstance that didn’t make it easier for him was the heat in Miami, which would take its toll on the tires. “I then had a little snap in the curve in front of me. I think I overheated the rear tires a bit and then lost the car,” says the Spaniard, who is therefore expecting a difficult race: “A lot can happen.”
After two early failures in a row, nothing should happen to him. “That’s right, it’s more about a clean weekend than anything else,” he said. “Because in terms of pure pace, I was faster over the past two weekends than the two races before. But the results were worse.”
“But there are still 19 races to go, and as Real have shown, everything can change in a matter of minutes in sport,” he said, referring to the success of his favorite team, Real Madrid, in the semi-finals of the Champions League, who scored two more goals against Manchester in the closing stages City shot and thus saved themselves in extra time, where they still scored the winning goal.
“I’m the first to be dissatisfied with the two accidents, but I’m also the first to analyze them and draw my own conclusions from them,” he says, recalling last year when he also had a series of accidents in training. “But after that came my best races in Formula 1. So I know how to get out of there.”