It’s the first Sunday without a podium in the 2024 Formula 1 season for Carlos Sainz. While it’s true that the Spaniard missed out on the podium in Jeddah, in that case, the Ferrari driver was in a hospital bed, having just undergone emergency surgery for appendicitis. In the other three outings, however, there was the spectacular victory in Melbourne and two third places in Sakhir and Suzuka.
In Shanghai, however, the Spaniard was never in contention. Certainly, starting from seventh on the grid was already a handicap, but at the first corner, his teammate Charles Leclerc pushed him wide, allowing George Russell’s Mercedes to slip through on the inside and pass them both.
The second-generation racer then lost another position to Nico Hulkenberg’s Haas, seeing his race immediately become an uphill battle. Carlos Sainz emphasized this in post-race interviews, at the end of a weekend that had already seen other moments of tension between the two, when they had a slight touch in the closing stages of yesterday’s Sprint.
“It was a bit of a crazy race, what we did at the start cost one or two positions for both me and Charles, and that weighed heavily on our race. Then we tried to follow George Russell’s Mercedes: I tried to overtake him, but he stopped, and then we stopped. We put on the hard tires very early, and in the final stint, I had to go very long, but we still managed to hold on to fifth place, which I believe was the best we could do today,” Carlos Sainz told in an interview for DAZN at the end of the Chinese Grand Prix.
Given the circumstances, the final fifth place, also achieved thanks to a one-stop strategy, can somewhat be seen as a glass half full. Still, it’s undeniable that the SF-24’s pace this weekend didn’t match what it had shown previously.
“Honestly, I don’t think we were very fast this weekend. When you qualify sixth and seventh, there’s not much pace in the car. We expected to do better in the race, but it didn’t happen, so it’s clear that this is the circuit where we struggled the most. We need to check if we did everything possible with the setup, and if not, it’s time to work on the car because this type of circuit didn’t suit us.” – the Spanish driver pointed out.
The one-stop strategy was essentially forced by a very lengthy Safety Car period, which occurred a few laps after Carlos Sainz had made his pit stop. At that point, he could only manage the pace until the end. “I wanted to do two stops, for sure, but the Safety Car lasted so long that I had to switch to one, but I had to use very used tires throughout the race, so I focused only on finishing and making sure Russell with new tires didn’t pass me, and we managed to do that.”
Finally, when asked to assess his 2024 Formula One season so far, he concluded: “You have to consider that I missed a race (in Saudi Arabia, due to appendicitis surgery) and still finished in the top five in every Grand Prix, so we started well, but China has been the most difficult circuit for both me and Ferrari so far.” – the Ferrari driver believes.
