The Styrian circuit saw Carlos Sainz finishing fourth in Sunday’s race, while Charles Leclerc, his teammate, finished second, earning Ferrari’s 800th podium.
Sainz’s managed to challenge the Monagesque in the first stint; however, a team call made him abandon his efforts as they wanted to pull away from Hamilton and Norris .
An early virtual safety car left him in a compromised position, where he lost the advantage of having track position by being forced to wait for a delayed Ferrari double-stack pitstop, which put him behind Norris, Hamilton and Pérez as well.
Commenting on the double stack that eventually hindered his efforts, he said: “It was the Virtual safety car ending (…) I think it would’ve not made sense; I was always going to get a bit penalized by that, which I did; I think I lost six, seven seconds of race time, three positions which I had to recover then, losing my tyres, track limits, from the first stop onwards my race was compromised, a shame, especially after having such a good pace.”
He managed, in the end, to fight with Sergio Perez in the last podium position, despite having older tyres. Their squabble prevented the Mexican driver from reaching Leclerc and challenging him for the second position.
Despite these positive outcomes, the Spaniard was left with a “sour feeling”, he expressed his disappointment by saying: “Obviously frustrated with the final outcome, having such a strong pace on the mediums, feeling also like I was playing the team game and not getting rewarded with a result which also leaves you with a sour feeling.
“I’ve been very strong today, very quick, fast, good overtaking, good defending but in the end, P4 is not what I want.”
The Maranello-based team managed to bring significant upgrades to the circuit, which brought variable results between both drivers during different sessions.
However, Sainz deemed the race result as positive and promising, and he affirmed his confidence with the car.
“I’m very happy with the car performance this weekend, with my feeling with the car, I think I’m also in a good personal moment with my driving, with my understanding of the car, how to drive it in the race, and it’s just a shame that we cannot maximize the result.”
Aston Martin filed a protest following the race in response to incidences of track limit violations, mostly at Turns 9 and 10, which were not properly identified and penalized.
After a thorough review, Sainz was one of the drivers who was subsequently handed penalties. A 10-second one saw him drop behind Lando Norris and Fernando Alonso to finish P6 in the final classification.
Photo credit: Scuderia Ferrari
