Carlos Sainz was left feeling like a ‘passenger’ after being sent on a one-way trip to the barriers early on in FP2, inflicting significant damage to his Ferrari SF-23.
The Spaniard found himself in the TecPro at Turn 3 after just eight minutes of running in FP2 as he struck a pair of bumps between Turns 2 and 3.
Combined with the effects of dirty air from a car ahead, Sainz was unable to save the car after it was tipped into a spin by the rough racing surface resulting in an early exit.
“It was a pretty big crash but in the end with cars this safe, you can get away with a pretty big hit pretty untouched,” said an uninjured Sainz on his return to the paddock.
“For some reason, there’s been a change in the track compared to other years,” Sainz noted. “There are two bumps – one at the exit of Turn 2, one at the entry of Turn 3 – that with this generation of cars upsets the car a lot.
“It nearly caught me out in FP1. We changed a lot of things in the setup and [my] line trying to get rid of it, and for some reason again on that lap it surprised me. It must have been the angle or the way I took that bump, but it made me a passenger from there on.
“We’ve seen before with this generation of cars, that any small bumps can make you spin, make you have a pretty heavy crash so it’s not ideal but it’s what it is. We will try and make it better tomorrow.”
While Sainz is not expecting to be hit with a grid penalty as a result of any repairs, he will now be on the back foot for qualifying and the race after missing the majority of the only representative practice session of the weekend.
Sainz’s crash contributed to a 20-minute stoppage in FP2 which was almost immediately followed by another halt after a spin for Haas’ Nico Hulkenberg.
Ferrari team-mate Charles Leclerc topped the dusk practice session but has warned that the Scuderia still has ‘work to do’ before it can start to consider an attempted coup for second place in the Constructors’ Championship.
“I only did one lap on the Medium and then straight away a lap on the Soft and it was feeling pretty good,” said Leclerc who sat half-a-tenth clear of McLaren’s Lando Norris at Friday’s conclusion.
“It’s a good sign when it starts like this so I hope we can have a great weekend from now on. Mercedes looked very strong, I’m not sure exactly what happened in FP2. They looked a little bit less strong compared to FP1 so we still have a lot of work to do because we will be fighting with them this weekend.”
Ferrari currently sit just four points behind Mercedes in the Constructors’ standings, but with Friday’s running disrupted by plentiful rookie running and FP2’s stoppages, there is still no real clear picture of the pecking order ahead of the season finale.
“It’s going to be a tricky weekend,” the Monegasque driver continued. “I think we are going to go into the race with as much information as we normally do on a Sprint weekend.
“We have very little info so it’s going to be very interesting and we will try and maximise the little information we have. It’s normally one of our strong points so I hope we can take advantage of that and beat Mercedes.
“We are trying to focus on ourselves and do the best job possible with tyre management tomorrow,”
“The second place in the Constructors’ is nice, honestly I would really like the team to be second at the end of this weekend. We have had a tough season but everyone deserves it.
“They have worked like crazy in order to bring the upgrades earlier and it would be deserved to be second at the end of the year. The Driver’s championship, honestly I don’t have too much hope of finishing fourth. If it happens, then good, if not I don’t really mind. I just want to win that championship as soon as possible.”
