Carlos Sainz believes the strategy made his race at the F1 Las Vegas GP more difficult as graining played a big role. In the end he was able to secure third place ahead of teammate Charles Leclerc.
The Las Vegas GP weekend has come to an end, with George Russell winning the race. His Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton recovered to second place, while Ferrari ended up with P3 and P4. Graining hit the Maranello-based team early on in the race, with Sainz left unhappy about his strategy.
“We didn‘t execute a very good race”
The Spaniard lost out at the start of the race, losing his second position to Leclerc. Leclerc attacked Russell for the lead but wear out his tyres too much and fell back. He later said that he lost up to three seconds per lap due to the graining.
When speaking in the Las Vegas GP post-race press conference, Sainz said: ”We just didn’t execute a very good race. I think we stayed out one lap too late on Mediums, two laps too late on Hards.
“By the time I was going to pit, we had this messy radio communication in the pit entry, which probably made me lose that lap that I was completely grained and I had to let pass Charles plus the two or three seconds that I lost in the pit entry. That means a lot of race time that maybe would have meant we could have ended up fighting Lewis.
“It just shows that in this sport, you need to do things perfectly week in, week out. We’ve been doing things really well in strategy and on race management all year around. But today wasn’t our day. We just didn’t do things well and we will have to learn from it and make sure we come back in Qatar stronger.”
Unhappy with communication for pitstop
During the race, Sainz was in a battle with Leclerc as well. He says that communication was an issue and made the strategy difficult. That didn’t help the team to get closer to Mercedes. Asked on this topic, Sainz explained the matter.
“I think he grained the Medium tyres and I managed to get ahead before the pit stop on Mediums. Then I did grain my Hards and he was coming quick behind me and me anticipating what was going to be a situation, because Lewis was straight behind Charles at the time. I was pretty sure the team was going to ask me to let Charles by because he was quicker at the time.
”As I was on grained tyres, I asked the team two or three times to box me, to get me out of the way, and get me a new set of Hards to make sure that I wasn’t losing a lot of race time by having to let Charles by and then having to fight Lewis at the same time.
“For some reason we didn’t box and I ended up having to let Charles by a lap later than was planned and losing a lot of race time. And by the time I was going to box, then we didn’t even box.
“So I guess he’s not happy, but I’m also not happy with the way things were handled at the time. And yeah, I think no one’s happy today in the team because we all expected a bit more.
”I’m on the podium, so at least I got that for the team. But at the same time, I don’t think we could have finished much better than P3 and P4 today.”
A lot of struggles due to graining
Asked on the challenges during the race, Sainz explains that the graining didn’t let them push the tyres in the 50-lap Las Vegas GP. He also praises the Mercedes drivers for their performance in the race.
“More challenges, more things going on than maybe what we expected,” the 30-year-old said. “At the same time, I think today Mercedes was just the quicker car, the quicker package. I think George and Lewis drove a very good race.
”We just struggled too much with graining, more than what we were anticipating. It meant that we couldn’t push on the tyres. We were having to save so much that we couldn’t use the pace of the car. And yeah, we were just simply not fast enough. So, not our day.”
Sainz expects to struggle in Qatar
Finally Sainz was asked on the upcoming race in Qatar and how the championship fight against McLaren will go. The Ferrari driver says: ”We just need to go into that trying to maximise whatever we have. I think over the last few weekends we’ve done a good job.
”Today the maximum, yesterday the maximum was a P2 in quali, today the maximum was a P3 in the race. In Qatar, the maximum might be a P5 or a P6 because in that car, with this car in a track like Qatar, I expect to struggle and I expect McLaren and Mercedes to be very strong. Probably also even Red Bull, given that they were strong also in quali in Austin.
”I think it’s going to be a very challenging weekend for us. That’s why today it was important for us to get maximum number of points available, and we kind of did that for the pace that we had.”
