A good start on the clean side offered Carlos Sainz the opportunity to overtake his teammate at the first corner and try to make the jump to 1st position, but the #55 finished right where it started.
After Carlos Sainz stayed as the sole Spanish representative in the second session sprint of the year when realizing that Alpine could not start Fernando Alonso’s A522, the driver from Madrid focused on his battle against his teammate and a Max Verstappen who only suffered slightly at the start.
Thus, the #55 extended the braking on the outside of the first corner to give an account of a Charles Leclerc that shortly after he would return the playalmost matching Verstappen… but the defending world champion covered the inside of turn 3 excellently and Sainz had nothing to do.
“I made a good start and then I had a couple of battleswith Max at turn 3 and with Charles a little later”, explained Sainz as soon as he got off his F1-75, a single-seater that, at least in the first few meters sprintseems to have squeezed the most.
back to the beginning
However, the fact of trying to intimidate Verstappen cost him to lose traction and return to 3rd after being fed by Leclerc. «It was a good fight; fun, as it should be. after I overheated the tires a littleso I left myself a gap to be able to recover them and be able to finish the race, ”explained the Spanish Ferrari driver.
There were several attempts by Sainz to get back to 2nd, and although it seemed that Ferrari was playing with fire at times due to how close its two drivers took some corners, both came out unscathed.
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Leclerc, asked about his career, spoke of “a little fight with Carlos” that ended as it began. “I started to push, cut him off… but he was pretty close overall. The race is tomorrow, and we hope to be able to start as well as today and put more pressure on Max”, continued the #16.
On whether they will work together on Sunday to go for Red Bull, Leclerc notably changed his record to close with a “I really hope so”somewhat annoyed by Sainz’s attacks at the beginning, just when he was saving tires to try to have a chance with Verstappen, as he regretted talking to the wall on the radio.
«We will need to improve the pace a little more; They seemed very strong at the beginning, but it seemed that we were starting to match their times»
Will they then be able to play with the strategy to overtake Verstappen in the race? “We will see. First we will need to improve the pace a bit more, because they seemed very strong at the beginning of the race, but little by little it seemed that we were starting to match their times. Tomorrow will be a different race, because there will be different compounds and anything can happen. The important thing is that we are in the fightwe will try to do our best to beat Max,” Sainz concluded.