Following his finest weekend in Formula One at the Mexico City GP, Scuderia Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz had a much tougher outing at Interlagos on Sunday.
In Q2 on Sunday morning, the rear got away from him as he applied power in the Senna esses, crashing into the barrier on the outside of turn 2, forcing the Spaniard to start from pit lane as gearbox and engine switches were required.
Despite his best efforts, Sainz never got inside the top 10 as the SF-24 was extremely difficult to handle for both drivers in the wet. He had some fights with the Saubers, Colapinto, Pérez, Bearman and Hamilton.
Running in P13 on lap 39, Sainz touched the white line on the entry to turn 8, spinning out and hitting the barriers once again, ending his day early.
Sainz reflected on a nightmare day afterwards.
“Just two very strange, unfortunate crashes today. A bit of a nightmare day, honestly.
“The two of them, not really […] just no sign of me crashing, so I couldn’t do anything to avoid them.
“But at the same time, it didn’t look easy out there to overtake today. Starting from the pit lane, it was always going to be difficult to make it to the points with the lack of overtaking there was.
“At the same time, yeah, apologies to the whole team for the two crashes, I hope we can come back stronger.”
Not all was lost in Brazil, however. McLaren had a poor Grand Prix, finishing down in P6 and P8, meaning the Woking-based team outscored Ferrari by only 7 points in the end as Charles Leclerc finished P3 in the Sprint behind Norris and Piastri, and the 27-year-old was P5 on Sunday.
If Ferrari can score on average 12 points or more over McLaren at the final 3 rounds, they will take the Constructors’ Championship as 36 points currently separate them.
Sainz has vowed they will be in the mix through to Abu Dhabi.
“Yeah, and we will be alive until the very end.
“Three weekends now coming up that are going to be obviously important for the whole team, and now we need to refocus, regroup and see how we can approach these last three races in the best possible way.”
The four-time race winner has traditionally gone well in the wet. He took his first pole in F1 at the 2022 British Grand Prix in those conditions, and he has produced strong race drives, such as at Singapore in 2017 in mixed conditions.
At the weekend, however, it was a very different story as Scuderia Ferrari did not have a good balance in qualifying or the race itself.
“Unfortunately, this year […] I’ve always been a very strong driver in the wet, but for some reason ever since I tried this car in the wet this year, I’ve never had a good feeling with it.
“I don’t know if we just don’t put energy into the tyres, we run it too stiff in medium to high speed or what is it, but it’s clear that it’s very unpredictable and very difficult to drive.
“I’m glad Charles brought it home in P5. I heard he was also struggling out there, so honestly a bit of a nightmare the whole race, but hopefully some dry races coming up and we will try and go for it.”
