After qualifying in which he failed to get past third position, Carlos Sainz faced the Bahrain Grand Prix race with the aim of trying to fight Charles Leclerc and Max Verstappen for the first victory of the season.
After the start, everything remained the same in the leading positions, however, the man from Madrid lost ground little by little with his teammate and with the Red Bull driver, focusing on the fight for what until then was the third and last step from the podium.
With just over 10 laps to go, a fire in Pierre Gasly’s car caused the safety car to come out and the entire peloton compacted, giving Sainz another chance to fight for the first two positions.
After several unsuccessful attempts, Verstappen began to suffer problems with his Honda engine and Carlos Sainz managed to overtake him moments before the Dutchman was forced to retire after running out of power, thus signing Ferrari’s first one-two in 2022.
Still hot, after finishing the race and seeing how his teammate celebrated the victory, Carlos Sainz was not very happy with his second place and admitted that he must improve and progress quickly if he wants to be one of the contenders for the Formula title 1 this season which, at least for now, promises a lot of success for Ferrari .
“Personally it has been a difficult weekend, I’m not going to lie, I didn’t have the rhythm, but I was able to hold on and get this double for the team. I have homework to do to come back much stronger”.
“Perhaps it’s the most difficult weekend as a Ferrari driver I’ve ever had, at no point last year was I lacking as much pace as I was lacking today, I still don’t understand how to run this car in a race or how to treat the tyres.
“I suffered throughout the race. You could see perfectly on TV that I was almost looking more backwards than forwards and well, I have to learn, head down, see where my difficulties are with this car and when I find them I will be fighting for victories,” he added.
The Spanish rider also did not want to forget his teammate and his team, who together have achieved a magnificent result that lays the foundations for a hopeful season.
“Congratulations to Charles and also to Ferrari . We’re back, it’s where we should have been these last two years, but the hard work is paying off.”
Regarding his overtaking of Verstappen , Sainz was happy to have been able to climb to second position, but regretted the Red Bull driver’s abandonment after his good race.
“On the restart I had a chance but he defended well and then I saw red lights on the back of his car and I thought ‘this is my chance’ and I went for it and I think it was unlucky because “He drove well enough to finish second, but I was able to overtake him and he had to retire. It is what it is and it has been a good thing for Ferrari.”
