The French GP began to go wrong for Sainz since his abandonment in Austria, which would end up causing an engine change that sent him to the bottom of the grid this Sunday. From there he progressed and reached podium positions, but Ferrari did not want risks and they sent him to a second pitstop that finally left him fifth.
The Madrilenian, with hard, had taken the start in stride and was gradually gaining positions, reaching the top 10 on lap 13 after having left behind Nicholas Latifi, Guanyu Zhou, Valtteri Bottas, Pierre Gasly, Mick Schumacher, Alexander Albon and the two Aston Martins.
However, teammate Charles Leclerc’s crash on lap 18 changed the race, especially for Ferrari. Beyond the KO of the Monegasque, there were many drivers who entered during that Safety Car , including a Sainz who was again ruined by his team with a bad stop.
Trying to make up for lost time, Carlos Sainz committed an unsafe release by joining up, stopping a Williams who was passing him, which caused him to receive a 5-second penalty.
He rode mediums and was 7th at the restart, quickly moving up to 5th by overtaking Lando Norris and Fernando Alonso. With the anger of the penalty, he left a brilliant overtaking of George Russell on the outside of Signes (Turn 11) to be fourth.
From there a debate began with the team about whether to stop or try to reach the finish on the medium tires, and when Sainz (by himself) chose to fight on track, he left another great maneuver to overtake Sergio Pérez and be third.
However, the team called him to the pits with 10 laps to go, and there he had to serve his penalty. Again he fell to ninth, and another had to pass Ocon, Ricciardo, and Alonso to be fifth.
“It’s been a good comeback. It’s a shame to have that medium tire after the Safety Car, which put us in doubt as to whether to stop or not. In the end we made the safe decision, which was to stop, instead of being left without a wheel at the end Sainz explained before the DAZN F1 microphones.
Despite the fact that he did not seem to agree with the stop, since he had a better pace with those medium tires than his rivals with the hard ones, in his statements he supported his team: “We will have to analyze it calmly, to see what the best option was Just as I had a different impression in the car, but the team has much more data than me to make the decision it has made and I am sure that with its data it will have been the right decision”.
In the end, Sainz considers that the slow stop that brought him a penalty was to blame for not being able to get on the podium: “Being on the podium as we were, even with a bad pitstop, it means that the race was going very well. We lost quite a long time at the stop. We were going really fast, passing a Mercedes and a Red Bull on the track, which today was not easy to overtake, as we have seen”
“Today, maybe without that bad pitstop and with a bit more luck, we could have finished on the podium, so I was a bit frustrated.”
Even so, he prefers to see the positive side: “Then when you see it calmly and analyze it calmly, you have to settle for fifth place, which is a good comeback.”
Finally, regarding his teammate Leclerc’s accident, he said that he did not know what had happened, and when they informed him of the driving error, he defended him: “I imagine that he will have lost it at turn 11, which is a curve where we had everything the weekend fighting with the car in the back. Things that happen”.
“The top four are going very, very to the limit. I’ve made mistakes, Charles [Leclerc] has made them, Verstappen will make them. We’re going very fast up front and that’s what happens,” he concluded.
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