Sainz denies any tactics against Leclerc, and cities "graining" as the Monegasque's biggest enemy
Following his on-track misunderstanding with his team-mate Charles Leclerc, Carlos Sainz has denied that he deliberately acted against what the Scuderia asked from him after the last round of pit stops.
Ferrari were favourites heading into the Las Vegas weekend, but they were caught by surprise on Thursday when Mercedes started to display a shocking performance.
The Scuderia managed to secure encouraging starting positions for the race, with Carlos Sainz taking second and Charles Leclerc fourth for the 50-lap Nevadan round. The Monégasque then had a brilliant start, jumping to second at the first corner, while the Spaniard dropped to third.
Although the two Ferrari drivers appeared to be the quickest in the opening stages of the race, their tyres completely fell off the cliff on Lap 8 which forced them to pit for a new set of hards. However, their pace on the hards was impressive again and managed to salvage their day by climbing through the field to secure a third and fourth place for the Scuderia.
Despite a relatively satisfying point haul, Leclerc hit out at his team-mate after Sainz ignored team-order. The eight-time F1 race winner was one of the first drivers to come into the pits for his first stop, but he managed to extend his second stop compared to his direct rivals.
Pitting three laps later than Sainz, he emerged in front of the Spaniard, but Sainz overtook him while Leclerc was intent on generating heat into his new hards.
The Madrid-born driver overtook Leclerc despite the team asking him not to put his team-mate under pressure in the first corners following his second and final pit stop.
Ahead of his second tyre change, Leclerc was noted by his race engineer Bryan Bozzi that “Carlos has been told to not overtake but it is really close, you might be just in front. He has been told to not put you under pressure. So just take care of your tyres.”
Taking the chequered flag in P4, Charles Leclerc made his feelings clear over the radio to engineer his new race engineer, who took over the role from Xavier Marcos earlier this season.
Asked to comment how he saw the on-track battle between him and his team-mate unfolded, Sainz reckoned that the main issue was that Ferrari did not execute the strategy well in a race where things changed quickly due to the unusual tyre behaviour.
"I think he grained the Medium tyres and I managed to get ahead before the pit stop on Mediums. 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.
Push on to comment on the incident before his second stop when he wanted to come in for new rubber, but was informed by Ferrari in the last moment to stay out, Sainz said that it was down to "messy" radio communication.
"We just simply didn't execute in general. 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," concluded Sainz.
