Carlos Sainz has revealed his surprise at holding off both Ferraris on raw pace to secure third place in the Sprint Race at the Formula 1 United States Grand Prix.
Heading into Turn 1, the Spaniard had a front row seat to the unfolding carnage of both McLarens being eliminated after colliding with Sauber’s Nico Hulkenberg.
Taking avoiding action, he moved into third by Turn 2, holding an iron grip on the final podium place, outpacing the Ferraris of Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc.
Speaking to media including Motorsport Week, the Spaniard explained how he believed the Turn 1 incident was going to end very differently, expressing surprise.
“Yeah, I had a pretty average, pretty poor start,” he said.
“I got distracted with one thing and I couldn’t get off the line well, which forced me to take the outside line into one.
“And a bit like George [Russell], I broke really, really, really late on the outside because you have all the clean air and the headwind to break as late as you want.
“But then I realised, looking left, that the guys on the inside had braked as late as the guys that were almost already out braking ourselves on the outside.
“So yeah, I kind of thought there was going to be contact there because people brake really, really late on the inside and there were a lot of cars on the inside.
“I took basically evasive action going all the way around the outside.
“I thought at some point I was going to go in the gravel of how much I had to avoid the accident. And then suddenly I found myself in P3.”
Sainz sees room for improvement despite Sprint podium
Summarising his race, Sainz expressed his surprise at holding back the Ferraris, particularly when Hamilton closed on the Williams in the opening stages of the race.
“Yeah, good race. Honestly, surprised that we could hold the Ferraris behind, especially because at some point they were super quick catching on me,” he added.
“But then once I got, I think Lewis was 1.2, 1.4 seconds, then he stopped making the progress and I could keep them at a comfortable margin.
Sainz revealed he and Williams could find more pace ahead of Sunday’s race, with a focus on low-speed performance, critical around the Circuit of the Americas.
“We need to improve a bit the race pace, especially low speed feels like we have a bit of margin to improve hopefully for tomorrow.
“But the car has been giving me confidence all weekend.
“Hopefully we can keep building on it because it’s been a very solid weekend, given the fact that we missed practice and we still managed to put the P7 on the grid and podium today.”
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