Carlos Sainz has revealed that he was nursing a battery recharge issue during the Safety Car restart periods in the Qatar Sprint Race.
Sainz, who lined up fifth, utilised the grip provided by the Soft tyre to propel his way up into third on the first lap, ahead of Max Verstappen and Lando Norris on Mediums.
However, the Soft-shod runners rapidly began to struggle, resulting in Sainz dropping behind Verstappen, Norris and Lewis Hamilton to sixth by the chequered flag.
The Spaniard admits he was already suffering from graining on the formation lap, prompting him to believe that the Soft runners would have been demoted to the back if the race lasted longer than 19 laps.
“Yeah, it was a tricky one,” Sainz said. “Right from the beginning, even in the formation lap, I could see graining on my Softs.
“Obviously it didn’t affect me in the traction at the start because I clearly got a good launch and a good move into [Turn] 1. But from there on, it was really, really tough.
“Tyres lasted two laps, then we were two, three seconds losing with the graining at the end of the race. Thank god it wasn’t a lot of laps because I think everybody who started on the Softs would have finished last.”
The Safety Car was called into action on three separate occasions, but Sainz says the opportunity provided to cool the tyres actually hindered those using the Softs.
“Cooling the tyre when you have graining is actually worse, but for sure if we would have raced all of those laps we would have been nowhere,” he acknowledged.
“Positive that we finish in the points doing the wrong choice probably, but we still lost points to Lewis [Hamilton] who was starting far back on Mediums.”
The choice to run Sainz on the Soft was inspired by the Singapore race winner failing to progress to Q3 in Friday evening’s qualifying session, leaving him with a new set compared to team-mate Charles Leclerc.
Sainz admits the extreme degradation of the red-walled compound surprised Ferrari.
“For me, obviously with that new Soft I thought it was going to be an advantage. We, as a team, didn’t expect the Soft to struggle so much,” he professed.
“So we thought it was going to be [a] start advantage and then [we’d] suffer a bit, but not three seconds off the pace like we were, so I think it was a bit of a surprise.”
Sainz and Leclerc got close on several occasions throughout the race, particularly after the three Safety Car periods.
When asked to expand on those battles, Sainz disclosed that his pace during those stages was hampered by his battery being completely drained by a software problem.
“I think with everyone, not only Charles. We were battling everyone, both of us defending each other but also defending from everyone,” he argued.
“I had a lot of battery problems, the lap after the Safety Car I was having a Soc [State of Charge] issue, so the two laps after the Safety Cars I was always struggling as my software was completely draining the battery – which is why I was so weak on the two laps after the Safety Car restarts, which is something we definitely need to review tomorrow.”
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