Carlos Sainz was devastated after his retirement from the Austrian GP. The Spaniard analyzed that he had the pace to achieve a double for Ferrara
Carlos Sainz fell short of his Silverstone result at the Austrian Grand Prix. Trying to achieve a double for Ferrari, the Spaniard was closing in on second-placed Max Verstappen when he had engine trouble in his F1-75 on the 58th lap. He stopped the car in the exhaust zone and had to get out soon, as it started to catch fire.
It is Sainz's fourth retirement of the season. He is already using his third power unit, which is already making the Maranello team wary. In an interview after the race, the 27-year-old driver lamented the problem.
"I'm a bit speechless because it's obviously a big loss of points because I think it could have been an easy 1-2," he said. "It caught fire, so it had a lot of damage for sure. There was no information coming from the engine that this was about to happen, it was very sudden," he added.
"It's not ideal, it's something we will need to keep working on. But the pace was there, the tire degradation was very low in our car was fast," he assessed.
The winner Charles Leclerc retook the vice-lead, while Ferrari moved a little closer to Red Bull: it is now 56 points behind the Taurus. However, Carlos does not hide his great disappointment, as he had great chances to also improve his position in the championship.
"It's difficult because we were about to cut good points for the championship leaders, both Max and Red Bull. We would make a very good result for the team, since Perez abandoned," he explained.
"It's heartbreaking, but we need to keep striving, turn the page. We still have a long season ahead of us," Sainz closed.