Scuderia Ferrari Spanish driver Carlos Sainz admitted that the dramatic brake fire on his Ferrari F1-75 car may have led to another retirement, this time in the Brazilian Grand Prix at the Autódromo José Carlos Pace, as the Spaniard suffered several technical failures during the current championship, which have prevented him from fighting for a place in the top three at the end of the season.
Carlos Sainz finished the Sprint race in second place on Saturday, but had to start the Brazilian Grand Prix from seventh place, due to a five-place grid penalty for changing the internal combustion engine. Thanks to a strong recovery race, the Spaniard ended up on the podium at Interlagos, passing the Red Bull RB18 of Sergio Perez with a nice move on the final laps of the race to secure his ninth podium finish of the season.
However, Carlos Sainz was in danger early in the Sao Paulo event, when his brakes caught fire on lap 18. Ferrari decided to start both F1-75 cars on mediums, a different tyre strategy to that of Red Bull and Mercedes, but Carlos had to be called to the pits in order to remove the visor tear-off in his rear-left brake duct. As a result, he also had to move from a two-stop to a three-stop strategy in Brazil.
The fire intensified briefly when at a standstill, before taking the best part of his out lap and finally subsiding. At the end of the race, the Ferrari man was asked whether his performance at Interlagos was in fact one of his most satisfying results in his Formula 1 career and replied:
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“Yeah, definitely. Especially because I think it has been a very solid weekend with a few setbacks like the penalty and the tear-off stuck in my brake duct that nearly caused me to retire. I had a brake on fire so thought it was pretty much over. Also, having to commit to a three-stop so early, I thought this was not going to be the right strategy, but for me from that point onwards it felt like I just had to push flat-out to the end and see where this took me. The good thing is that we managed to recover a lot of pace. We were very fast. We going to challenge Checo [Perez] towards the end with this comeback and to finally get the podium was a really good feeling.” – he explained.
The brake issue risked compromising his race, as the Spaniard returned to the track out of the ton ten, alongside Williams driver Alex Albon and no longer able to complete the Brazilian Grand Prix with just two stops:
“There were issues for one or two laps before where I think we overheated the brakes and this also made the tyre overheat. I was also suffering a lot also with concentration and keeping the car in the right place. Then we boxed. The pit stop, because of that, was probably a bit slow. It forced us into a three-stop. But once we stopped, everything was good to push. We had a decent stint on the soft having to pass a lot of people but then the race really came alive when I put the new medium on again in the middle of the race and here is where I could do some good lap times and get myself back in the race.” – Scuderia Ferrari Spanish driver Carlos Sainz concluded.
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