Carlos Sainz conveyed his frustration at the current rate of bad luck afflicting his Formula 1 season, saying he is “fed up” with how he has been on the wrong end of certain situations.
The Spaniard was on course for points at the British Grand Prix, but was taken out of contention by Charles Leclerc late in the race in an unseen incident at Stowe, where the Monegasque’s Ferrari slid wide, knocking into the Williams.
It continued a recurring theme of Sainz’s year, in which many times he has been likely to score good points, but ultimately finds himself in a situation where he is the innocent party.
After the race, Sainz told media including Motorsport Week that he is becoming increasingly frustrated at how his luck is failing to improve.
“It [the race] was going well,” he said. “A bit like the whole year so far, we were doing everything right. Good strategy goals, good driving. P7, P8 at the time.
“10 laps to go when I was fighting with Charles. I think he was on his outlap on the slicks. He lost control of the car and crashed into me. And that was it.
“I went back to P12 with a damaged car. And I finished P12. So again, very unlucky. A bit fed up with this situation where always something happens to us that is out of our control.”
“No offence to Charles, this always can happen to any driver. But just upset with the fact that it happened to me today again when we were about to have a clean weekend and a clean race.”
Sainz ‘welcomes two-week break’
When Sainz was asked if he took some sort of relief in the result, given it had been better than some of his other recent ones, he was resolute in his negative response.
“No, I’ve had a very disappointing result,” he replied. “P12 when I was running P7, 10 laps to go. We’ve had retirements before. No, for me at 12th it’s like retiring. In the position we are.
“It feels like a retirement, especially because we were running P7, P8. We had done everything right. Yes, maybe the others took a bit more gambles on the strategy calls.
“Maybe they will look into what Nico [Hulkenberg] did. [Lance] Stroll, I think, did a couple of also good calls maybe. But we did a very solid race with management of the pace and the race.
“So we’re in the ideal position to score a top-seven result. And suddenly fighting with Charles, he lost control of the car and took me out. It’s what it is.
“There’s nothing we can do. I welcome this two-week break to see if something changes in my life so we can start having an F1 season, because this has been everything but good so far.”
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