In the round-up: Carlos Sainz Jnr dismisses the idea Ferrari tried to use strategy to get his team mate ahead of him.
In brief
No favouritism at Ferrari – Sainz
Sainz passed the other Ferrari of Charles Leclerc early on, only for his team mate to pit soon afterwards. As Sainz delayed his pit stop, Leclerc jumped back in front of him. Sainz passed him again and went on to finish ahead.
But Sainz, who will leave the team at the end of the year, does not believe there was any favouritism in the team’s strategy. “I don’t think it was an intended ‘undercut’,” he said.
“I think Charles degraded the tyres probably a bit earlier than me, and they decided to keep me out for three or four laps. Honestly, those three or four laps were very strong. I think I managed to go down to 37s, low 37s again. So it was worth it.
“Then luckily it didn’t compromise my race because I could pass Charles fairly quickly and go and attack George [Russell], which I passed also quite quickly. So I don’t think I lost too much race time on that situation.”
Zhou pleased with ‘best of the rest’
Sauber’s Zhou Guanyu was pleased with the drive which lifted him to 11th place in yesterday’s Bahrain Grand Prix.
“We had a clean race with a good start where I was able to make up some positions,” he said, “but it was quite challenging to keep the Aston Martins behind without compromising our tyres. Luckily, I managed to keep Kevin [Magnussen] and the rest of the field behind me.
“We made progress over the weekend, and the team worked hard to find the optimal set-up. Unfortunately, in a race with no attrition, we couldn’t get points without anything happening to the cars ahead of us.”
Ferrari imply BoP behind poor Qatar showing
Ferrari lacked pace in the opening round of the World Endurance Championship yesterday. While teams are forbidden from discussing the series’ Balance of Performance rules, Ferrari indicated the enforced changes to their car’s weight and power output were behind their poor weekend.
“We saw our pre-race fears confirmed, namely, the power-to-weight ratio’s high impact on competitiveness that left us in an inferior position and precluded any chance of contending for the podium,” said Ferrari sports car chief Antonio Coletta.
“Looking at the positives, we drove all three cars to the finish again, amassing further data and kilometres that will be useful starting at Imola.”
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