“We need to focus on more than the Red Bull”: Carlos Sainz warns Ferrari of threat from other F1 rivals in Chinese GP main race

Carlos Sainz believes Ferrari will also have to pay attention to the McLarens and Aston Martin ahead, instead of just focusing on the Red Bull drivers. Speaking to media including Sportskeeda after the qualifying session, the Spanish driver believes that they have the pace to overcome the other cars ahead of them.

Despite being on the back foot in qualifying, Carlos Sainz managed to classify seventh in the session. The Spanish driver is optimistic about his chances in the race but believes that clearing the McLarens and Aston Martin might not be easy.

More than targeting a podium, he felt his job at hand was to optimize their opportunities in the race to clear the cars ahead. The Ferrari driver claimed that their car tends to struggle in long medium to high-speed corners. Therefore the layout coupled with the track surface could be a concern in the race in terms of tire degradation and graining.

The front-end limitations of the Chinese circuit have a tendency to excessively grain the front tires as seen in the past, which has been one of the areas the Ferraris don't struggle. As a result of which, Carlos Sainz triumphed in Australia with ease, keeping the Red Bull drivers and McLarens at bay. However, he believes the Shanghai circuit leans more towards the characteristics of the Japanese venue Suzuka, where they struggled to hunt down the Red Bulls.

Asked by Sportskeeda if he was optimistic about their chances to fight for a podium in China, Carlos Sainz said:

“I think we need to focus on more than the Red Bull and just see how in terms of race space we can overcome the two McLarens and the Aston. They've shown better pace over one lap this weekend. Over a full race distance, I'm hoping we'll get our chances. The problem is it's three cars to overtake. Normally in a race, like if you look at me in Suzuka, to overtake Lando, I had to extend two stints to get one car.”

“To overtake three cars tomorrow, you really need to show proper race pace you know. And to overtake all three will be tricky because you wear a lot the tires while trying to overtake one car (and) then you need to overtake another. So let's see. My feeling is we can come back but we need to show much better pace than today.”

Asked if he was expecting a bit more coming into China, Carlos Sainz said:

“I remember saying that the longer racing corners here are more like Suzuka than Australia. In the end it is probably even worse than Suzuka I would say over one lap. And that, in combination with a weird surface doesn’t seem to be giving us much grip over this weekend. That shows that over one lap we were nothing special. I don't think there was really much more in the car at least today, with when you see both cars within a thousandth (of a second) almost. And hopefully in the race, we’ll have this one or two tenths turn around which we some times see and we can get those cars tomorrow. Because this is a long race.”

Carlos Sainz explains his qualifying drama ahead of the Chinese GP

Carlos Sainz believes that the qualifying spin that brought out the red flags was a result of him taking too much curb while approaching the final corner. This resulted in the Spaniard sliding into the gravel and spinning into the barriers before the finish line. He believes that the red flags saved the day for him as they were able to fix a new front wing on his car and resume the session again.

Once the front wing was fixed, he reckons until the red flags the picture looked grim for the qualifying session. He felt P7 was a decent position to start from despite the incident and early drama in the sprint, where he clashed with Fernando Alonso. The clash resulted in a damaged floor that had to be repaired before qualifying.

Asked about the incident in qualifying, Carlos Sainz said:

“Obviously a very hectic moment in there with Q2 with the crash. Just did a simple mistake you know just hitting the curb a bit too hard, that threw me. A bit of line touched the gravel at the exit, hit the gravel and spun. Then next moment before hitting the wall I managed to turn the wheel a bit and crash in a better angle than the direction I was going. Probably this saved the day because we were, it was looking bad at one point. And from there on, a bit of strong lapping to do to recover from that moment. But the confidence came back and put together some strong laps.”

Asked if he had any damage from the qualifying incident, Carlos Sainz said:

“We had to change the front wing. The front wing was delivering a bit differently, so the balance changed a bit. Every front wing behaves differently and obviously there was some taping the car which for sure didn’t help. But still even with all that, the moment in quali, the adrenaline and the hard wear we did quite high. To recover with this is a good thing and we start P7 tomorrow. The cars we had ahead today are anyway quicker over one lap this weekend. Long corners, medium, high speed, long racing corners which is where the Ferrari always tends to struggle. So hopefully tomorrow in race pace we are better off.”

After the qualifying session, there was a protest from Aston Martin to review the result of the session because Carlos Sainz had stopped on the track and then continued back into the pits after the red flags dropped. The Silverstone team protested the fact that the Ferrari driver was allowed to continue into the session after stopping on the track after a long duration. However, FIA summoned the two teams and other team representatives to review the scenario after the session.

Several hours later, the regulatory body dismissed the protest citing incidents in the past where cars had stopped for a longer duration and were allowed to continue. If the protest was accepted, it would have resulted in the 29-year-old being disqualified or starting at the back of the grid, promoting Lance Stroll to tenth place on the grid. Nevertheless, after the decision by FIA, Carlos Sainz gets to keep his seventh place on the grid, with the chance of targeting a top 5 finish or a podium.