“But I’m very disappointed”- Carlos Sainz furious on his teammate after the rear brake problem caused him to drop out from qualifying.
Carlos Sainz had an unfortunate outing in Bahrain after a spin in Q2 made him quit the qualifying session, later it was discovered that he had a rear brake problem.
“We experienced a problem with the braking system in Q2 which denied him an opportunity to show his true performance,” team principal Andreas Seidl stated. “Apologies to Carlos: he’s felt strong in the car all weekend.”
Not that it made Sainz feel better for his own predicament and spoke about how he felt and was disappointed about the situation, which now forces him to start from the 15th position on the grid.
“You obviously get out there at 300kph and you hit the brakes and suddenly the rear brakes locked completely,” he told the media when he got back to pit lane.
“I don’t know really what happened,” he said. “We obviously hit an issue at the start of Q2, which locked up the rear axle and that was it. “But I’m very disappointed. I had just got through Q1 with only one set of tyres, I had saved some softs for later in the qualifying.
“But that set of mediums was so important for this weekend, and it looks like it is completely flat-spotted and I’m not going to be able to use it for the race. It looks fairly destroyed, so I’m very disappointed.”
The problem is the limitation in strategic options
Sainz further expressed that the biggest problem with the whole setup is the minimal flexibility in the strategic options as they have to save hard tyres for the race day.
“The problem is the strategic options available for us with the tyres we’ve got,” he explained. “We’ve been trying to save those harder set of tyres for the race
“At the moment I don’t know what I’m going to have available tomorrow with the problems I’ve had today,” he added. “For us to have that problem with the medium tyre flat-spotted, and lose it probably for the race, is the worst possible scenario.
“It leaves us with very few options if we have lost [the set of mediums] with that lock-up, he told Movistar. “That’s why I’m very angry. I’m sorry, but I’m very angry.
“You can come back, but it gets very complicated,” he continued. “Especially because the top ten is going to start with the medium, and those of us who start behind them won’t have an advantage over them.
