Carlos Sainz has placed the blame for today’s turn 1 incident at the door of Oscar Piastri as the pair failed to finish at the Belgian Grand Prix.
From 4th and 5th on the grid, Sainz lunged towards the apex to try and overtake Lewis Hamilton into turn 1. However, he locked up and failed to recognise that the young Aussie was on his inside.
They had an awkward tangle with Piastri hitting the inside wall with his right front and it was game over for the McLaren. Sainz also picked up significant damage and had to call it quits on lap 23.
Sainz believes history of turn 1 at Spa has shown that Piastri’s positioning of the car was overly optimistic and contact was inevitable.
“I was on the attack with Lewis and I think I pretty much had the move done into turn one. I hit the apex cleanly and everything.
“But unfortunately I think Oscar was trying to do a bit of an optimistic move on me I think.
“A bit of a shame because when you review the past races here in Spa and you know what’s been the difficult turn one incidents it’s exactly that. Everyone who tries the inside line into turn one normally generates an incident or a crash and tries to really make it around there normally generates an incident or a crash.
“And this time it was my turn to receive it.”
Sainz refuted a suggestion he was out of control heading into the first corner because he had his right front all locked up. The 2022 British Grand Prix winner added that the responsibility was on Piastri to back out of the move.
“I didn’t go deep. I made perfectly the apex and passed Lewis. If you look at my onboard, yes, I do lock up, but I don’t go deep into the corner.”
“At some point someone needs to back out. He’s the guy who is alongside my rear-right that I think needs to back out of the move and not me and let him pass me into turn one, especially when I’m pretty much having my move done with Lewis.”
Speaking about the incident from his side, Oscar Piastri believes it was a classic opening lap tangle as he had nowhere to go at the apex.
“I think it’s quite firmly in the category of a lap one, turn one incident. I got a good start and put my nose alongside. And then when we got to the braking zone, Carlos moves a bit to the right and locked up and I also had to try to avoid that a bit.
“From there to the apex, my options were quite limited in where I could go. I’ll look back over it more and see if there was more I could have done.
“But just a shame that we’re standing here and not still on track.”
As Sainz attempted to pass Hamilton for P3, his sudden move to the right to try and make the overtake did catch Piastri by surprise.
“From Carlos’s point of view, the move to the right surprised me a bit.
“For myself, I think from there I was quite limited. Maybe I could have braked a bit later and been further alongside. But it’s very easy to say that with hindsight.
“I think once once I was in that position, it was quite hard to either go forward or go backwards. And I was just kind of stuck. So I tried to do the best that I could from that position but there wasn’t much I could do.”
Piastri added he believes both of them could have done things slightly differently to avoid the unfortunate tangle that happened.
“I think looking back on it, I think we both could have done things a bit differently.”
Photo credit: Red Bull Content Pool
