“I think a double podium would have been possible today, especially with my pace,” said Carlos Sainz after the Formula 1 race in Spielberg. But while Ferrari teammate Charles Leclerc made it onto the podium in second, Sainz was left with a thankless fourth place.
For Sainz, there were two main situations in Austria that kept him from the podium. On the one hand, there was the first pit stop, where he had to wait behind his team-mate, and the denied stable order in the first stint.
Sainz was breathing down Leclerc’s neck and signaled his team that he could go faster and overtake the Monegasque. But Ferrari denied him the desire for a stable order: “We’re sticking to the plan. No attack at the moment,” his engineer told him on the radio.
Sainz comments after the race: “I was very fast today, especially on the medium tires. I felt like we had a lot of pace today. It’s a shame we didn’t get to use it.”
Because Sainz had to stay behind Leclerc in the first stint – that was agreed in advance. “That was the strategy that the team and the drivers had agreed on: we wanted to move away from positions four and five and not attack each other,” confirms team boss Frederic Vasseur.
Sainz stuck to that: “They didn’t want us to fight and I stuck to the plan. I still had some pace up my sleeve and felt pretty good and could probably have overtaken,” he says.
His answer to the question about the pace shows that he was not necessarily happy with the situation, but still wanted to stick to the agreement: “I think you can see it,” he told his engineer. “I don’t have to tell you specifically.”
Ferrari team boss Vasseur defends strategy
Team boss Vasseur defends the strategy: “Certainly, if you’re behind, then you’re much faster with DRS,” he knows where Sainz’s assumption came from. “But we didn’t want to switch every two laps. That was the strategy and they implemented it perfectly.”
In the end, however, it was at the expense of Sainz. Because Ferrari wanted to use the virtual safety car for a double pit stop after Nico Hülkenberg dropped out, the Spaniard had to wait behind Leclerc and lost a lot of time due to bad luck with the timing.
Red Bull was surprised that both Ferraris were brought in at the same time: “We thought they would split,” says team boss Christian Horner. “But to be honest they couldn’t have done much more today. And I’m sure they tried to treat both drivers fairly.”
Sainz doesn’t know either why he was put on the same strategy as Leclerc: “I guess the team had a reason to bring in both cars. And if not, then I don’t know,” he says.
But Ferrari wanted to take advantage of the VSC and the lower loss of time, which went wrong. “We were a little unlucky because the VSC was activated when we crossed the line at the pit lane entrance and it was brought in when we entered the pit lane,” said Vasseur. “It was either five seconds late or five seconds early, but that’s the way it is.”
Sainz unlucky
The loser was Sainz: “I lost six or seven seconds and positions that I shouldn’t have lost,” said the Spaniard angrily. “It’s a pity I got held up like that after playing the team game.”
“I then had to push on the medium to overtake again, and that’s how I got the track limits,” says Sainz, who had received a five-second penalty. “And from then on, my race was just affected.”
He delivered a spectacular fight to Sergio Perez, but had nothing to oppose the Red Bull. Nevertheless, he was able to hold off the Mexican long enough that Leclerc’s second place was no longer in danger, although Vasseur says: “I think we were quite safe with Charles against Perez. It wasn’t a big problem.”
Nevertheless, he praises: “He did what he could and did a very good job at the time.”