The departure of the 2022 Japanese Grand Prix of F1 seemed that it was going to give strong emotions to all the fans who were glued to their screens at dawn in Europe, and it is that the rain made an appearance a few minutes before the traffic lights went out . At first it was a light drizzle, causing the drivers to opt for the intermediate tyre, but over time the water intensified and caused chaos at Suzuka.
At the moment in which the single-seaters started, the spray caused by the passage at high speed made it difficult to see well, something that, added to the aquaplaning, sent Carlos Sainz against the protections between the hairpin of the second sector and the Spoon curve . The Ferrari driver lost position in the first meters against Sergio Pérez, so he was relegated to fourth place, and from there he tried to come back to return to the podium, but when he tried to get rid of the Mexican, he couldn’t control his car.
The man from Madrid was left in the middle of the asphalt with his wrecked car, and acknowledged in subsequent interviews that he was “lucky” that no one hit him, in addition to explaining what happened at the start: “In the end, everyone decided to go out with the intermediate, and by the time the start was given the conditions were already extreme [rainy]”.
“There was a lot of aquaplaning, there was practically no visibility, and in one of these I tried to get out of the wake of Checo [Pérez],” he told DAZN F1 microphones after his strong blow in Japan. “I ran into a puddle, I did aquaplaning and I lost the car. The worst came later, when you were right in the middle of the track and you realized that the others did not see you”.
“These are conditions [that are] a bit on the limit, I don’t know what they will think about doing. The track and the visibility, in the end, made it impracticable,” he commented on what he expected the international federation to do for the rest of the test after raising the red flag.
When asked what he thought of the governing body temporarily suspending the test at Suzuka, the Ferrari man replied: “I don’t know what they will want to do, what is clear is that if the drivers don’t see anything, you are telling your luck. let him do whatever he wants to do on a day like today”.
“The 18 riders who were behind me, it seems, have not even seen me standing in the middle of the circuit, it was pure luck that they did not hit me, so imagine. It was a bit to the limit, but I hope they take the correct decision”, sentenced the Madrilenian, who adds his fifth abandonment of the 2022 season.
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