For Carlos Sainz, qualifying to the Formula 1 race in Canada ended in an enormous disappointment. The Spaniard resigned as 17th in Q1 and has a rather difficult Grand Prix in front of him. The Williams driver quickly found the culprit for this: Isack Hadjar.
The Racing Bulls driver had hindered him on his decisive last Q1 round and thus cost Sainz ‘move into Q2. For this purpose, the Frenchman was also subjected to three starting positions with a criminal letting, which means that he falls twelve from ninth.
However, Sainz is of no use at all who is on his colleague after qualifying. “When you arrive in Q1 and there is someone in the middle of the route that ruins your qualifying completely, it means that your weekend is destroyed and I like P17, even though I should have fought for Q3 and the top 8 today,” the Spaniard struggles.
“I’m extremely disappointed,” he adds, emphasizing that he doesn’t care whether he was actually quick. Because in the end only the result counts.
Sainz: Thought he wanted to annoy me with dirty air
Sainz says he had already seen Hadjar in curves 3 and 4 and was surprised that he hadn’t taken a seat there.
“I have already lost a tenth or two by Dirty Air there, but thought to me: Okay, he just plays the game and gives me dirty air, knowing that this is not considered hinder, but still takes a tenth to me, maybe because he was at the border and wanted to give me intentionally,” said the Williams pilot.
“And then I noticed in curve 5 that he still doesn’t get out of the way. I had to lift and overtake it inside of curve 6 – as in a race – of course with a bad angle in curve 6 and 7, so I lost two or three tenths,” he struggled.
Overall, he therefore expects a loss of three or four tenths of a second – and that on a round in which he only missed the move into Q2 by 0.020 seconds and would have made it easily into the second section. “To be honest, it’s very frustrating, but it’s what it is.”
Hadjar: got wrong information
Hadjar, who was on a run -off round, said the situation that the team had told him that Sainz had broken off his round. “I never hinder someone, not even in training,” says the rookie and calls the incident a “complete failure”. He is sorry: “It’s a shame, it ruined his qualifying. And probably a little mine.”
Hadjar also described his explanation in front of the commissioners and said that he had trusted the information of his team, even though he saw Sainz in the mirror. When he realized that the information was wrong, he did his best to drive out of the way.
Nevertheless, Hadjar admitted that Sainz was hindered, which is why the commissioners pronounced the standard penalty of three starting places. This puts Alexander Albon (Williams), Franco Colapinto (Alpine) and Nico Hülkenberg (cleanly) each.
Sainz himself does nothing. Although he gains a position on Sunday, he wins a position through another criminal offense of Yuki Tsunoda (Red Bull).