“I did consider it”– Carlos Sainz reveals that he mulled giving Fernando Alonso a DRS range window to prevent Lewis Hamilton gaining.
Carlos Sainz was running ahead when Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso were running wheel-to-wheel, and he was certain that he will be the next victim of the Briton race driver.
At that moment, the Spaniard thought of bringing his compatriot Alonso into the DRS range to allow him to gain some pace over Hamilton to further prevent Hamilton from moving above.
“Yes, of course I did consider it,” Sainz said. “Obviously we are racers and we are considering every kind of scenario to stay ahead. What you guys probably don’t know is that I was having to do a lot of fuel saving.”
“I was also quite weak in the last corner because I was struggling a bit with the tyres towards the end. And the combination of having to fuel save into Turn 1 and being weak in the last corner meant that in the end, I took the decision not to risk my position with Fernando.
“We will never know if I took the right choice, but thinking about it at the time, my feeling was to play safe and try to pull away from Fernando to make sure that I tried to do all the fuel saving and Lewis would take more time to catch me.”
Still got the podium.
After dealing with Alonso, Hamilton took no time to gain over Sainz to ensure a podium for himself, and the Spaniard was agitated by losing to the seven-time world champion.
However, luck eventually favoured him as Sebastian Vettel was disqualified from the race, and the third-place podium went to Sainz, giving Ferrari a decent haul in Hungary.
This is the second time with Sainz when he learned about his podium after the presentation ceremony.
