Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz struggled hugely on the medium compound in F1 Portuguese GP, but the former managed to hang on.
Ferrari’s Sainz had a solid start to F1 Portuguese GP on the soft compound to be fourth ahead of Red Bull’s Sergio Perez. But his charge was undone upon re-start, where he lost not only to the Mexican but also McLaren’s Lando Norris.
Team orders forced Sainz to give up his place to teammate Leclerc, who was in a better position to challenge Norris. But the Monegasque suffered on the medium tyres, especially in the first stint, and a switch to hard didn’t change much for them.
Still, he was sixth, which was a better result than eighth in qualifying, as he discussed on his performance in whole weekend. “I feel I have done a very bad choice with the tyres in the race,” said Leclerc to TV media. “I think we took a great decision to go on the hard tyres, the medium for me and Carlos, we struggled massively.
“We had a lot of graining straightaway and we struggled a lot with these compounds, I don’t have any explanations as on paper it looked a very good choice, but then in the race we struggled. In the race we did fine, but when I look the whole weekend, I haven’t done a good job as a driver whether it is practice or qualifying.
“I haven’t extracted much out of the car, because we were very inconsistent. From eighth, there was not much better we could do but looking at the whole weekend, I could have done a much better job,” summed up Leclerc, as teammate Sainz lost big time on his stint on the medium tyres, dropping him from seventh to 11th in the dying stages.
“It was definitely not an enjoyable race,” said Sainz. “Everything was running pretty smoothly at the beginning, but we tried the undercut on Lando, pushed really hard on the out lap to try and make the undercut and as soon as I tried it I saw graining on the medium appearing.
“Once that graining appears, there’s very little you can do really. I don’t know, it was very early in the race, we went onto the medium very early, and I could see that graining opening up. We don’t know why the medium tyres on our car didn’t work, but we need to see what we could have done better.”
Here’s how F1 Portuguese GP panned out