Scuderia Ferrari Spanish driver Carlos Sainz admitted that he was not looking forward to the prospect of another duel with his former teammate Lando Norris in today’s Brazilian Grand Prix, which takes place at the Interlagos circuit in Sao Paulo, as the Spaniard pointed out to the McLaren driver’s ‘particularly aggressive’ defending in Saturday’s sprint event.
Given the sprint format for this weekend, the qualifying was held on Friday evening at the Autódromo José Carlos Pace in difficult weather conditions, which resulted in a mixed grid for the Sprint race: the big surprise was Haas driver Kevin Magnussen starting from P1, his first Formula 1 pole position. For Scuderia Ferrari, the qualifying session in Brazil was a very difficult one: Carlos Sainz qualified in fifth place, while his Maranello teammate had to start from P10 due to a wrong tyre choice in Q3.
As Carlos Sainz and Lando Norris raced one another off the line in Saturday’s sprint race, the Ferrari man was not at all happy with the way in which his former teammate defended, pointing out that it was a bit too much.
Now the Spaniard is not looking forward to repeating the battle in today’s main event at the Interlagos track: “The challenge of passing Lando, who was particularly aggressive with me – I don’t know why he defended for his life and I had to make it stick,” he explained at the end of Saturday’s shorter race when questioned about the difficulties he expects in the Brazilian Grand Prix: “But hopefully I can pass him quickly over the line and then join the battle at the front.” – he added.
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Despite the fact that Carlos Sainz finished the Brazilian Sprint race in P2, behind the Mercedes of George Russell, the Spaniard will have to start today’s race from P7 due to a grid penalty received for changing the engine. Once again Lando Norris will be just ahead of him on the grid, as the two Mercedes drivers will begin from the front row:
“It’s going to be, I think, exciting like it was today. Probably the order of the cars tomorrow is already more set than the order that we had today. So, it will be more of a strategic race. We will have the two Mercs, the two Red Bulls and the two Ferrari cars – unless something crazy happens in lap one. And I think it looks like that’s the race pace of the cars. Maybe Max can go back to having a good pace, after struggling with a medium. Then we need to see, as a team, together with Charles, how we can at least get closer to the Mercs, to lose as many less points as possible, which is the target.” – the Spanish driver explained.
Scuderia Ferrari have to defend a 40-point gap to Mercedes in order to keep second place in the go Constructors’ Championship.
Carlos Sainz is aware that his grid penalty will make things much more difficult: “Unfortunately, I have to take a penalty, which is a bit the story of my season. Whenever I’m strong and whenever I’m on the pace, I have a setback that weekend, which is a bit the story of the whole season, as I said, but yeah, at least I feel confident. I feel comfortable. I feel like I did a perfect race today. So I’m up for the fight.” – the Ferrari driver concluded.
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