Scuderia Ferrari Spanish driver Carlos Sainz openly criticised the stewards at Circuit of the Americas for the way they handled the position swaps in Austin, admitting that he did not like how they “play” with the order.
Scuderia Ferrari are involved in a close fight with McLaren for third place in the 2021 Formula 1 Constructor Standings and their squabbles were just as intense on track at the United States Grand Prix on Sunday.
At one stage though the scraps became a little messy, with Carlos Sainz who had to let a McLaren car pass him, despite the fact that the stewards put out the order for both Daniel Ricciardo and Lando Norris to be let by.
Carlos Sainz eventually finished in seventh place and was left to reflect on a race where McLaren, the stewards and pit stops were all sources of frustration, aware that fifth position was possible for the Spanish driver at Circuit of the Americas.
“On Lap 1 there was a bit of a mess with the two McLarens, fighting the two of them, trying to defend, and in the end I made it ahead of them but I decided to let by one of them just in case the stewards were going to take action,” he said, as reported by Sky F1 – “And in the end they even took action even though I let them by, a bit confusing to be honest and I don’t like how they play with the positions, because I think what I actually did of letting by one of them was already quite genuine and should have been enough. Then I had to pass by Lando [Norris] and then I was stuck the whole race behind [Daniel] Ricciardo and we pulled the trigger for an undercut, but again another slow pit stop didn’t allow us to undercut and we got stuck again behind him. A pretty bad race for me.” – he explained.
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Carlos Sainz’s duel with Daniel Ricciardo for fifth place would become “a bit dirty” as the Spanish driver put it with light contact between the pair. There was no blame placed on Ricciardo though, with Carlos Sainz saying he would have defended the inside line robustly too if he were in Ricciardo’s position.
Asked for his take on that moment with Ricciardo, Carlos explained: “My take is that the guy on the inside does this kind of thing on purpose always to try and squeeze the guy on the outside, I would have done the same. The thing is that it could have been rough with the contact, I think he could have done it a bit cleaner because I nearly spun, but it’s all good, I would have done a similar thing if I was in his position. It was a good battle, just we should have been ahead with the pit stop that we did to undercut him, and in the end we were again behind. We shouldn’t have been there.” – he added.
At the end of the 2021 United States Grand Prix, Scuderia Ferrari were still able to narrow the gap to McLaren in the Constructors’ to 3.5 points as Charles Leclerc finished in P4 and Carlos Sainz in P7. But Carlos Sainz admitted that for him this was not a positive weekend, taking into consideration the fact that he failed to make the most of the pace of his SF21 car: “No I think today we didn’t maximise, we should have been with the pace of the car, ahead of both McLarens, and we didn’t get the opportunity. So disappointed with it and definitely something to look into because it should have been a day that both cars should have finished ahead of the McLarens and we didn’t maximise.” – Carlos concluded.
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