Hoping to get back on the podium and, why not, dreaming of his first victory in Formula 1 at Ferrari’s house, the driver from Madrid started from fourth position after a great comeback in the sprint race.
Carlos Sainz added five points thanks to his performance on Saturday afternoon, but on Sunday he saw how everything faded due to a touch in which he was not guilty with Daniel Ricciardo. The Australian hit the rear of the red car, causing an insurmountable spin at the Tamburello chicane that left him trapped in the gravel run-off.
This is the second consecutive abandonment of the Spaniard, something that had never happened to him with the Maranello team, and he is very far from the fight for the world title with respect to the two favorites, his teammate, Charles Leclerc, and the winner of the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, Max Verstappen.
After getting out of the car, he gave his impressions of the incident: “A pity, the two cars (Ferrari) did not start very well, the McLarens did it fast. We stayed a bit, but in the first corner I managed to recover position” .
“I have tried to give Daniel [Ricciardo] as much space as I could and it looks like he had to go up to the piano, he made a mistake and he hit me,” explained Carlos Sainz. “That’s racing, you can’t do much more.”
The man from Madrid signed a contract that binds him to the Cavallino Rampante team for two more years, until the end of the 2024 season, good news in a weekend full of problems due to the blow in the classification and the withdrawal in the race major.
In the first free practices it seemed that he could celebrate his renewal with a podium in Imola, but things went wrong and on Friday he conditioned the entire Grand Prix. With a comeback ahead, Sainz was fourth for Sunday’s appointment, so he had to take risks at the start if he wanted to advance in the fight for the world championship.
On this, the Spaniard commented that they must investigate why they have been overtaken by their rivals: “We have to analyze it, because McLaren and Red Bull have clearly come out better than us, so we will have to study it. It doesn’t matter, it was a long race, and although If a McLaren passed me, I had 63 laps to return it.”
“I don’t know what happened at the curb at turn 1, that Ricciardo had to climb up with the bad luck that he gave me, he couldn’t give him more space,” said Sainz.
