Palmer on Carlos Sainz’s performance in Australia…

Former Formula 1 driver Jolyon Palmer summed up the Australian Grand Prix, highlighting the performance of Carlos Sainz…

In Melbourne we saw a spectacular and dramatic race with many difficulties that the riders had to overcome to reach the finish line. If you succeeded, you almost certainly scored points.

One of the drivers in the heat of the moment was Carlos Sainz – for him the Grand Prix consisted of good, bad and bad moments, in the end he and the Ferrari team got no points.

The Spaniard’s penalty on the final restart became a major talking point after Carlos radioed his engineer and called the penalty “the most unfair” he has ever seen in Formula 1.

I can understand Carlos’ disappointment – the race ended behind the safety car, the extra five seconds moving him from fourth to tenth. From this point of view, the penalty seemed severe, although it is one of the mildest available to stewards.

In this situation, however, I only partially sympathize with Sainz. He went too deep into the first corner and played braking late with alpine rider Pierre Gasly. As a result, they both lost this race – Sainz crashed into his partner Alonso, and Gasly flew onto the grass and then made contact with his partner, completing the race for both Alpine pilots.

The grid was then overtaken again, Alonso regained position and eventually finished third, but these incidents led to another red flag and were duly investigated in accordance with standard procedure.

In the past, riders sometimes got more for starting incidents, but in the last two years the penalties have become more severe, as evidenced by similar sanctions against George Russell for the Sainz incident in Austin last year. Obviously Carlos was offended – he had a great race before that. In Melbourne, Carlos was in better shape than his partner Leclerc, and in fact a year ago Charles confidently won this race.

When the race was first stopped with red flags after Alex Albon’s crash, it cost Russell and Sainz dearly. They pitted as soon as the safety car was announced to reduce the loss of pit time as the others were running at a slower speed. But the subsequent red flag allowed the rest to make a pit stop without losing any time. Permission to change tires under red flags has always seemed controversial to me.

But personally I don’t mind. Like safety car runs, these events can change the course of a race. This is an element of chance. Someone is lucky, someone is not, and someone can achieve unexpected success, like Gasly in Monza in 2020.

In Melbourne, Russell and Sainz were particularly unlucky as Albon’s crash did not appear to warrant a complete red flag stoppage of the race. In my opinion, this decision was somewhat exaggerated on the part of the race direction, who are extra careful this year when it comes to the safety car and red flags.

Russell’s car caught fire after a few laps and Sainz had to push through from 11th. In my opinion he overtook very well.

For the middle group riders, he was behind Gasly in fifth place. Some cars overtook easily – Red Bull has incredible straight line speed with DRS open. Others struggled. The Alpine car also has low drag, so it was difficult for Sainz to get ahead of Gasly in turn 9, where most of the overtaking took place. I had to improvise.

He took his chance in the third inning. For several laps, he saw Pierre pass him in the middle of the track and overtake perfectly prepared on lap 25. Having shifted to the outside radius beforehand, he distracted the opponent, confident that in that case he could easily go to would enter where no one was. But Carlos knew exactly what he was doing and when Gasly closed on the left he immediately attacked on the right. This multi-lap overtaking action is sure to rank among the best overtakes of the season.

Although Gasly’s final restart with Sainz ended in a crash and no points, both drivers outperformed their teammates for the first time this season.

The next race will take place in Baku, where the Italian team started to have serious problems last year. Maybe now they are starting to improve with this race.