Carlos Sainz said that “no one’s happy today in the team” after he and Charles Leclerc finished third and fourth in the Las Vegas GP.
The pair suffered from more tyre graining than had been anticipated in a race that proved difficult for the team to manage as the pair battled on track.
Sainz challenged his team on pit strategy and was also caught out when he was heading into the pitlane and was told at the last second to stay on track as the crew was not ready for him.
In so doing he lost extra time as well as having to complete one more lap on tyres that were past their best.
Leclerc meanwhile expressed his frustration how the race unfolded with a sweary rant on the radio on the in-lap.
Sainz could not challenge George Russell and Lewis Hamilton up ahead, and insisted that graining and an overall lack of pace relative to Mercedes were the main issues.
“More challenges, more things going on than maybe what we expected,” said the Spaniard. “I think today Mercedes was just the quicker car, the quicker package. I think George and Lewis drove a very good race.
“At the same time we just struggled too much with graining, more than what we were anticipating. And yeah, it meant that we couldn’t push on the tyres.
“We were having to save so much that we couldn’t use the pace of the car. And yeah, we were just simply not fast enough. So not our day.”
Regarding how strategy played out he admitted that the team had made mistakes.
“We just simply didn’t execute in general,” he said. “We just didn’t execute a very good race. I think we stayed out one lap too late on mediums, two laps too late on hards.
“And by the time I was going to pit, we had this messy radio communication in the pit entry, which probably made me lose that lap that I was completely grained, and I had to let pass Charles plus the two or three seconds that I lost in the pit entry.
“That means a lot of race time that maybe would have meant we could have ended up fighting Lewis. But yeah, it just shows that in this sport, you need to do things perfectly week in, week out.
“We’ve been doing things really well in strategy and on race management all year around. But today wasn’t our day. We just didn’t do things well, and we will have to learn from it and make sure we come back in Qatar stronger.”
Expanding on how the race unfolded Sainz made it clear that he wasn’t happy with some of the calls.
“I think he grained the medium tyres and I managed to get ahead before the pit stop on mediums,” he said.
“Then I did grain my hards and he was coming quick behind me and me anticipating what was going to be a situation, because Lewis was straight behind Charles at the time, and I was pretty sure the team was going to ask me to let Charles by because he was quicker at the time.
“As I was on grained tyres, I asked the team two or three times to box me, to get me out of the way, and get me a new set of hards to make sure that I wasn’t losing a lot of race time by having to let Charles by and then having to fight Lewis at the same time.
“For some reason we didn’t box, and I ended up having to let Charles by a lap later than was planned and losing a lot of race time. And by the time I was going to box, then we didn’t even box.
“So I guess he’s not happy, but I’m also not happy with the way things were handled at the time.
“And yeah, I think no one’s happy today in the team because we all expected a bit more. I’m on the podium, so at least I got that for the team. But at the same time, I don’t think we could have finished much better than P3 and P4 today.”
