Unwelcome fifth place
The last Imola outing as a Ferrari driver ended with a bitter fifth place for Carlos Sainz. The Spaniard never seemed able to get close to the podium positions and lost the fourth place he had at the start due to the undercut executed by McLaren’s Oscar Piastri, who passed him without any major problems and then held the position until the checkered flag. Speaking after the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, Carlos Sainz, did not hide his far from happy mood, highlighting what was for him a disappointing race characterized by issues with the SF-24 that – according to him – Ferrari carried over from the qualifying session on Saturday.
“Today we lacked a bit of pace,” emphasized the Spanish driver after the race in front of the Tifosi – “I am not very happy because yesterday after qualifying we saw something in the car that might not have worked as we expected. We had problems, so today was a bit of a damage limitation race. Honestly, I am not happy, because we were a bit behind all weekend, always at least a couple of tenths, and it’s not ideal. That said, we take the fifth position in a race where not much happened.” – the Spaniard pointed out.
Problems to solve
“There were some issues that limited us throughout the race, it’s something we need to analyze, but obviously, I can’t go into too much detail,” Carlos Sainz added in his post-race interview when asked by the media what specifically did not work for the Maranello team today – “It was not a race I enjoyed, the car was inconsistent, I struggled a lot,” summarized Carlos Sainz.
The only positive side, for the Spaniard himself, is the podium achieved by Charles Leclerc. An encouraging sign overall: “He showed a good pace, we can battle in the race. In qualifying, we need to understand what we are missing and improve, because there will be tracks where nothing can be done with strategies and overtakes, as we saw today. Next weekend (Monaco, ed.) is again all about qualifying. This package is not optimized for Monaco, we need to see the details of what went wrong,” – Carlos Sainz concluded at the end of the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix in Imola.
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