After a horrible qualifying session at the 2023 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, Carlos Sainz will start tomorrow’s race from 16th on the grid. In the aftermath of his scruffy lap, the Ferrari driver blamed Mercedes and Alpine for ruining his flying effort, per RaceFans.net.
After being told that he had failed to move out of Q1, Sainz came onto his team radio and said, “I had so much traffic. I think people, the Mercedes did it on purpose. Did it turn five ahead of me, the Alpine turn two-three.”
That is Carlos Sainz’s first Q1 exit since the 2019 Brazilian Grand Prix.
He finished on the podium that weekend pic.twitter.com/FnuBYjWOzP
— ESPN F1 (@ESPNF1) November 25, 2023
Sainz feels that George Russell and Pierre Gasly deliberately kept a 2-second distance from him in order to disadvantage his flying lap. “Between us drivers, we know that if you do a corner two seconds in front of another car, one second or two seconds in front, you’re going to make him lose a tenth or two in that corner.”
It was crucial for Sainz to be up there with his teammate to help Ferrari’s cause when it comes to the Constructors’ Championship. Going into the last race of the season, Ferrari need to outscore Mercedes by four points to seal P2 in the championship.
Carlos Sainz needs to bounce back from back-to-back F1 nightmares
The weekend itself started poorly for Carlos Sainz. During the FP2 session on Friday, the 29-year-old crashed out with extensive damage to his SF-23. From the onboard, it looked like a mechanical issue.
In the aftermath of the crash, Sainz did point out a bump in the road which was attributable to the car bottoming out and hitting the barriers. According to the Spanish driver, it was due to an unconventional set-up direction that the team had taken.
carlos sainz post-quali interview:
“it was a very bad situation leaving the pits the last car. the situation with the traffic in the first and second sector, […] we had a problem with our front wing, and that delayed us.”
that pit lane traffic pic.twitter.com/WwBGmc54Rv
— ً (@forsainz) November 25, 2023
At last weekend’s Las Vegas GP, too, Sainz suffered from misfortune. After his SF-23 ran over a dislodged drain cover, the Ferrari driver was handed a 10-place grid penalty for applying new components to his damaged car, even though it was not his fault.
Despite all these setbacks, Sainz said, “Clearly the pace all weekend hasn’t been the strongest and we needed a perfect Q1 and Q2, given how tight the field is, and we had a very scrappy Q1”.
