Carlos Sainz finished fifth in the Dutch Grand Prix and stressed after the race that the speed of the Ferrari car did not allow him to fight for the podium, so he continues to rejoice at this result. In any case, the Spaniard did not let Lewis Hamilton overtake him.
“Frankly, there were simply no options that would allow us to claim the podium,” Carlos is quoted by Madrid’s AS newspaper. – Once the situation stabilized during the race and everyone got into their rhythm, we didn’t stand a chance. In fact, they were gone all weekend.
That’s why we can be happy that we got fifth place, although we fought with faster cars, but we were able to get the highest possible result. The shortcomings of our SF-23 were manifested literally in everything.
We didn’t have enough speed on the straights, I didn’t have enough speed in the corners – you could see Hamilton easily overtaking me in Turn 1 and 10, how close he was to me. In these corners we lost two-tenths per lap all weekend. We understand what this is about: everything is clearly visible on telemetry, but nothing can be changed.
It was definitely one of my best races this season given the conditions. I have done everything in my power. It was hardly possible to achieve more, because even Alpine we lost half a second on a circle on both a dry and a wet track. At the same time, we have not made any mistakes and should try to spend the remaining races of the season at least not worse.
At the same time, on some tracks we will be able to claim the podium, on others we will not go above 8th place. But in Zandvoort the situation was even more difficult, but we still finished fifth.
When I saw the poor condition of the rolled-in set of intermediate tires they had put on me at the last pit stop, I immediately realized that I would have to hold off Hamilton’s attack for the remaining seven laps. On one of the laps I already thought he was in front of me now, but probably Lewis made a mistake, which allowed us to increase the gap.
So I’m glad I was able to get ahead of him, despite the fact that the machine didn’t really allow me to even fight for positions in the top ten. It was a very difficult weekend, but we ended it pretty well.”
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
