Carlos Sainz did not hold back when he appeared at the microphones at the end of the Spanish GP, his home race. After Charles Leclerc’s interview, where he expressed displeasure about his teammate’s early-race attack, the Spaniard responded to his Ferrari counterpart. The two had already confronted each other in parc fermé after getting out of their cars.
The confrontation clearly did not calm the situation. The incident in question was an overtake early in the race where Carlos Sainz attacked on the outside of turn one, aggressively closing the trajectory, forcing Leclerc to use the entire inner curb. This led to a slight contact, with Sainz going wide into the run-off area but maintaining the position ahead of his teammate.
Charles Leclerc was upset for two reasons: the aggressiveness of the overtaking attempt, despite his attempt to defend by braking late, and the fact that, according to him, it was agreed in the pre-race briefing to manage the new soft tires at that stage of the GP.
However, Carlos Sainz disagrees with this version, emphasizing that the target was to push the Mercedes due to having fresher tires compared to their used set.
“For me, it’s very clear, we have a new soft, Mercedes is on a used soft, we have to attack. I did exactly that. I don’t know what happened to Charles on the first lap, but I had the opportunity to overtake him; it’s not like I’ll stay behind forever,” Carlos Sainz replied directly to Sky Italia when asked to explain his point of view following Charles Leclerc’s earlier interviews.
“Then I went to attack the Mercedes, I was very close to overtaking them in the first stint because they were on used tires, and I was on new ones. I wanted to pass. I don’t know what he’s complaining about; this time, honestly, I don’t understand what he’s worried about,” added the Spaniard, making it clear that his objective was to exploit the advantage of the new softer tires on the track rather than use them as a mere strategic element to create an offset, as Charles Leclerc had done.
Interestingly, even Charles Leclerc’s strategy only marginally worked, especially against Lewis Hamilton. By the end of the first stint, Charles Leclerc had pitted eight laps later than Hamilton, but by the end of the second stint, that margin had halved, too little to hope for a comeback. The comeback nearly happened on George Russell, who was on the same strategy as Carlos Sainz, having pitted early in the second stint to mount the hard tires, which proved ineffective, as shown by the internal comparison within Mercedes.
“I think we moved away from the optimal strategy to try an undercut on Mercedes. And today, it was a bit like in Bahrain: the more optimal the pit stop laps were, the faster the race was, and overtaking was possible,” added the Spaniard, who, before the second stop, had asked not to pit too early to mount the hard tires.
Beyond the duel with Charles Leclerc, today’s race provided clear answers according to Carlos Sainz, especially in terms of the field’s hierarchy, with McLaren now the leading force: “Honestly, I think the most consistent car right now is the McLaren. I think the Red Bull is struggling on some tracks. Like us. The McLaren is fast everywhere. They are fast at low speeds. They go flat out through turns three and nine. They were the fastest in turn five. So, it seems to me that the McLaren has no weak points at the moment,” commented Carlos Sainz at the end of the Spanish Grand Prix.
On the other hand, the Spaniard emphasized that the result in Barcelona also stems from the characteristics of the Catalan track, full of fast corners. Yesterday, at the end of qualifying, the Ferrari driver highlighted how bouncing negatively affected the car’s behavior, and it is likely that to try to contain the problem in fast corners, the engineers opted for a setup that penalized the car in other areas of the track.
Overall, however, this type of track with long corners still challenges the SF-24, highlighting the strengths of the competitors: “Honestly, I expected to be at least closer, but when you look at McLaren and Red Bull, they are really far ahead, while Mercedes has improved so much that on these types of tracks they are ahead of us,” added the Spaniard.
“We need to work especially on these types of tracks. I think if we returned to Monaco tomorrow, we would be fighting for victory, but there are more tracks like Barcelona than Monaco now. That’s why we need to improve on these types of circuits because with long, medium-high speed corners, we struggle more than others.” – the Ferrari driver continued – “We need to make sure that when we go to tracks like Spain or Zandvoort, with long and combined corners, we have a more effective package. Instead, there will be races like Monaco and maybe Austria where we expect to be more competitive.” – Carlos Sainz concluded.
