Carlos Sainz Jnr has insisted his fight with Charles Leclerc in the early stages of yesterday’s sprint race didn’t cost them a chance of scoring a better result at the finish.
Leclerc and Sainz ran fourth and fifth at the start of the race but began exchanging positions on lap two. On lap three, Leclerc suggested to his race engineer that he was losing too much time to the drivers ahead of him. “We’ve got to try and come back on the others if possible,” he said.
Sainz continued to attack Leclerc until finally making his way by on lap five. From then on the Ferrari pair used their superior race pace to catch the cars ahead of them. Both Ferraris passed George Russell, Sainz took second place off Lando Norris on the final lap and Leclerc came close to passing the struggling McLaren driver.
However Sainz does not believe the time they lost at the beginning of the race cost them a chance to catch race winner Max Verstappen. “I don’t agree,” he said. “I think it’s a sprint and I think everyone races hard from the beginning to the end.”
Sainz will start today’s grand prix from third on the place, one position higher than yesterday, with Leclerc alongside him. He is hopeful Ferrari will be able to challenge for victory.
“Obviously the main race is a much longer race where I think everyone tends to play a bit longer game with tyre management and everything, and everyone applies all the lessons learned from the sprint [race]. So everyone knows how to manage the tyres better, where to manage them, et cetera, and all.
“So it will be a matter of putting ourselves in a position to try and win again. And again, like everything else, a lot is dictated by the start, by the first lap, and you never know where you’re going to end there. So you cannot go into a race with a super-clear plan in your head because normally that plan after one corner changes completely because of that start or that turn one. So let’s see.
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“I’m confident that if we do a good job together, for sure we can fight with [Verstappen and Norris], whether we can beat them starting behind them, that’s another thing. It’s never easy to overtake in Formula 1, especially the McLaren and Red Bull.”
He admitted Ferrari’s pace at the Circuit of the Americas has been a surprise as they did not expect the track configuration to suit them.
“For me, that’s the biggest positive so far of the weekend, the fact…
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