2024 Formula 1 Bahrain Grand Prix post-race press conference transcript:
Carlos Sainz about being aggressive on track after a year of being defensive:
“It’s actually a bit of a relief because I remember last year,the last race where I was attacking was Austria. We’re talking about 13, 14 races ago. The rest of the races last year, you just had to manage. You just had to look in the mirrors. You just had to control your pace. There were very little opportunities to go and overtake people. I love going racing, and I love going overtaking, being aggressive, attacking. And with last year’s car, it was simply impossible to do that. As soon as we were in dirty air, as soon as we overheated the tires, as soon as we pushed a bit too much, it was game over. This year, to come to the most rear-limited track of the season, the highest degradation, and do an overtaking, attacking race for me is a relief and it gives me a feeling that we will be able to do this more often this year. It doesn’t mean we will do it every race at all, because I still think one of our strongest parts of our car is qualifying, so I think we will still qualify maybe ahead of what maybe our true position is but at least we’re not degrading and defending like crazy like we were doing last year.”
Carlos Sainz about if the race was proof he can be the alternative to the Red Bulls this year:
“I hope we can be. I think we are a bit too far at the moment to mount a proper challenge for race wins if they put everything together and they make everything perfect. But the base that we have on the car this year and the aero platform and just the car that we’ve put on track feels and drives a lot more normal than last year. From here, if we offset this level of downforce, you know, and we just keep adding downforce to this car, I think we can start getting closer to them. But we need to start doing it from now, because if not, they they’re going to start pushing and getting far away.”
Carlos Sainz about if the brakes overheating was discovered during testing or if it just came up this weekend:
“I don’t know the level of severity he [Charles] had but for me it was at one point pretty bad too. It’s something that you cannot discover in testing because in testing you never put yourself in 10 laps consecutive behind four cars getting all the hot air from the four cars in front and the brakes never cool down. I tried not to panic. I tried to put the side that was more heated, & I took a different line on the straights to cool them down. And yeah, at one point, the pedal started to go quite long and also a lot of brake vibrations, which changes your feeling on the braking quite a lot. But yeah, I kept it cool, managed them, and as soon as I got a bit of clean air, it cleared and it became a lot better. But it’s something that we definitely maybe need to take a bit more margin going into the next few races.”
Carlos Sainz on whether Ferrari tried to undercut him:
“I don’t think it was an intended undercut. I think Charles degraded the tyres probably a bit earlier than me, and they decided to keep me out for three or four laps. Honestly, those three or four laps were very strong. I think I managed to go down to 37s, low 37s again. So it was worth it. Luckily it didn’t compromise my race because I could pass Charles fairly quickly and go and attack George, which I passed also quite quickly. So I don’t think I lost too much race time on that situation.”
Carlos Sainz on whether he’s surprised by Red Bull’s overall race pace:
“Again, no. When I saw the long runs of Max and Checo on FP2 and then the long runs of testing, there’s no secrets. We’ve been here 3 days. I knew they had a three, four tenth advantage, maybe not half a second like George was saying, depending on track conditions. But I knew it was going to be very difficult to beat the RB. They also kept a new soft, which shows a bit what the intentions and their plans were. So I knew the Red Bulls today were going to be very, very difficult to beat. So to keep up with one of them and have the possibility to fight is already a good surprise. I think we were at one of their strongest tracks of the season with very high tyre deg at the rear. Hopefully when we go to a more front-limited track and maybe better tarmac, our car slipstream, so you’re just sliding a bit more. If I would have been within a second or maybe five seconds behind, I think on the Hard tyre I could have maybe showed a bit more the true pace of the car and my pace today.”
Carlos Sainz on his battle with Charles Leclerc:
“It never felt close inside the car. Whenever I do an overtake on my teammate I will always try and leave as much margin as possible, and I try and do it whenever I feel like I’m fully under control and I’m not putting any car at risk. And that’s exactly what I did. I felt like a very good move. And yeah, always keeping an eye on Charles and not making him also lose time or anything like that.”
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