Sainz: Ferrari’s “very weak” F1 Canadian GP weekend a one-off

The Spaniard spent much of the grand prix struggling with pace and could not crack the top 10, and his chances were further dented when he made contact with Alex Albon at Turn 6 after spinning to put the Williams driver out.

Sainz felt that he had to “take risks” to make progress in the slick-tyre phase of the race, which he felt was likely responsible for his Turn 6 strife, as he felt the competitiveness swing slightly in his favour as the circuit started to dry.

He felt that Ferrari’s struggles in Canada would be a “one-off”, borne out of an inability to hit the ground running by preparing the tyres correctly in qualifying.

“It was one of those races where the pace never clicked. We had some damage in the car from a couple of contacts that we had during that crazy race but there was never really enough pace today to make any overtakes.

“Only when we went on slicks there towards the end of a race I started to feel there was maybe potential for some points, and I was starting to become a bit quicker.

“I was just trying to take some risks to overtake people in the DRS trains to try and be close in sector two, probably touched maybe the wet.

“I don’t know. It’s a very strange way that I lost it there in mid-corner and ended our race. It was a very weak, very disappointing weekend for the whole team because we never seemed to find a good pace.”

“I think Canada was a bit of a one-off, a bit of a special one and we need to understand what happened as a team. There was clearly something the others were doing in qualifying with the tyres to prep them better.”

Charles Leclerc had to cope with a power unit issue throughout the race, which he was initially told was costing him about half a second in the straights, and he had to change a number of settings on his steering wheel throughout to try to alleviate the problem.

After sinking down the field, Ferrari attempted to take a gamble and put him on fresh hard tyres as the circuit was drying from the earlier rainfall, but this did not pay off when a rain shower emerged later on in the grand prix.

“I don’t know what happened. At first, I think [I was losing] six tenths, but then some laps It was 1.2, sometimes it was 1.5, sometimes it was one second,” the Monegasque said

“Every time I was going on power, I didn’t know what I will get – and that was, first of all, very difficult to drive, very frustrating because in the straight, I would get overtaken by everybody.

“In the first part of the race, I think we did quite a good job managing that. And because we were in wet conditions, we could recover in corners, I was still believing we could finish in points.

“But then as soon as it dried up, I was a sitting duck in the straights. [The long pitstop] was annoying. But at the end, that was the best we could do at that point. I knew we would finish out to the points whatever happened with that issue. So we had to try something with the slicks.”