Carlos Sainz's poor pace caused by floor damage after Hamilton contact on lap 1

Scuderia Ferrari leaves the Zandvoort circuit with much less than hoped for ahead of the Dutch Grand Prix weekend: a place on the last podium spot courtesy of Charles Leclerc and an eighth place with Carlos Sainz, after a very frustrating Grand Prix. First of all, the F1-75 cars did not have the pace to match the potential shown on Saturday in qualifying when compared to Red Bull and Mercedes.

Carlos Sainz had a worse time of it today, on the back foot right from the start, due to a contact with the Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton, which led to some floor damage, as confirmed after the Dutch Grand Prix by F1 Technical Analyst Piergiuseppe Donadoni, who pointed out that Carlos Sainz’s negative race was largely due to a damage to the right side of the floor generated in the contact at the start with Lewis Hamilton. The floor broke and folded. The right sealing was missing (whuch led to less downforce and an unbalanced car).

Further confirmation of this came with an image showing the floor getting damaged on the F1-75 car of Carlos Sainz after the race start:

Two pit stops incidents completely compromised the Spanish driver’s chances to take at least a top five finish: there was a late call to bring him in for the first pit stop and when Carlos stopped, the left rear tyre was not ready. The Spaniard lost around nine seconds and thus several positions. He rejoined eleventh after which he did well to move up the order as far as sixth place.

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During the Safety Car period after Valtteri Bottas stopped his Alfa Romeo car in the track, Carlos pitted again for Soft tyres, planning to go on the attack to the end of the Dutch Grand Prix. As he pulled away, he had to slow down to avoid some McLaren pit crew ahead of him. This meant the F1-75 was moving slowly, so that as the Alpine of Fernando Alonso came up behind Carlos, he had to slow down so as not to hit the Ferrari. This incident was severely deemed to be an unsafe release and Carlos was therefore given a five second penalty: the Ferrari driver finished the race in fifth place on track, but the penalty dropped him back to eighth.