Andreas Seidl claims safety car jeopardized Carlos Sainz’s Sakhir Grand Prix hunt

Andreas Seidl reveals how the safety car hindered Carlos Sainz’s fight for the Sakhir Grand Prix podium place, while he was at an advantage.

Carlos Sainz despite being in the shadow of three unlikely podium holders of the Sakhir Grand Prix and the dramatic downfall of George Russell, he managed to have an excellent result by coming fourth in the second race in Bahrain this season.

However, McLaren team principal Andreas Seidl has claimed that the Spanish F1 driver could’ve got a better result if not safety car got involved in the race.

“Obviously, how the race played out, it worked out for Esteban and Lance,” said Seidl “But I think they probably benefited also from the way the safety car came in because this is where Carlos was on the hunt with the last set of tyres.” as per the Autosport.

“So I think it’s difficult to judge. We still need to analyse, if that would have made a difference in a normal race. In the end, I think we have to clearly say congratulations to Checo, he was just flying.”

“I think he has shown what this car together with him can do. And that’s something we simply cannot compete with at the moment. I think our race was in the end with Ocon and Lance.”

“As I said before, I guess with the timing of the safety cars and so on, we were only a bit unlucky to fight these two cars, I would say. Carlos did a great job, and together with the team, and I think we maximised everything we had in our hands, keeping Daniel [Ricciardo] and [Alex] Albon behind us.”

Adhered to the strategy

Seidl claimed that despite the sudden irritants in the races, McLaren didn’t feel the need to improvise and rather stuck to the plan they came with initially.

“I would say going into this race, we clearly expected a two-stop race. Then we could see that tyre degradation definitely was lower than expected.

“But in the end, we still saw that it was overall the better strategy in terms of race time to go for the two stops still, even live during the race,” he said.

“And again, I think it would have been quite close to Esteban and Lance with their one-stop races if the race would have finished without the safety car. Because as I said before Carlos was on the hunt, getting closer to them.

“But at the same time, we clearly have to acknowledge that against Checo there was nothing we could do, he was simply on a different level in terms of pace.”

About the author

Tanish Chachra

Tanish Chachra is the Motorsport editor at The SportsRush. He saw his first race when F1 visited India in 2011, and since then, his romance with the sport has been seasonal until he took up this role in 2020. Reigniting F1's coverage on this site, Tanish has fallen in love with the sport all over again. He loves Kimi Raikkonen and sees a future world champion in Oscar Piastri. Away from us, he loves to snuggle inside his books.

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