Carlos Sainz considered giving Alonso a DRS boost against Hamilton at Hungaroring. Carlos considered giving Alonso a DRS boost against Hamilton.

Scuderia Ferrari Spanish driver Carlos Sainz admitted that he took into consideration the possibility of lending a helping hand to Fernando Alonso during the Alpine driver’s fight with Lewis Hamilton in the final stages of the 2021 Hungarian Grand Prix, hoping to be able to thus protect his position among the top-three drivers at the end of the race.

Having side-stepped the first corner mayhem at the Hungaroring, Carlos Sainz settled among the top-five when the race was restarted. The Ferrari Spanish driver then progressed up to third in the second half of the race, just ahead of the battling duo of Alonso and Hamilton. As the fight intensified in the race’s final stages, Carlos was tempted to let Alonso within the one-second window that would trigger the Alpine driver’s DRS, which would have perhaps delayed even further Hamilton’s overhaul of both drivers.

However, the Spaniard had other issues to deal with, that precluded him from putting such a plan into action: “Yes, of course I did consider it. Obviously we are racers and we are considering every kind of scenario to stay ahead. What you guys probably don’t know is that I was having to do a lot of fuel saving. I was also quite weak in the last corner because I was struggling a bit with the tyres towards the end. And the combination of having to fuel save into Turn 1 and being weak in the last corner meant that in the end, I took the decision not to risk my position with Fernando. We will never know if I took the right choice, but thinking about it at the time, my feeling was to play safe and try to pull away from Fernando to make sure that I tried to do all the fuel saving and Lewis would take more time to catch me.” – he explained.

While Hamilton took the better part of ten laps to get the measure of the feisty Alonso, he got the upper hand over of Sainz almost immediately.

Carlos Sainz and Fernando Alonso thus crossed the checkered flag respectively fourth and fifth, but both drivers moved up a spot in the provisional results following the disqualification of Aston Martin’s Sebastian Vettel who had finished in second place.