Carlos Sainz admits issues with the fuel tank after latest trouble in F1 Qatar GP, as he talks about getting over the DNS quickly.
Having had an issue with fuel leak which forced him to miss F1 Qatar GP, Ferrari’s Sainz admits of frustration due to the recurring trouble. It is a headache he states while noting that they are trying to find long-term solutions to it rather than short.
The hope is that they don’t face a similar issue this weekend in F1 US GP as they are in a close fight with not just Mercedes but have to defend third from McLaren’s onslaught too. “No, we’ve changed a lot of parts in the car to try and obviously correct the issue that affected us in Qatar,” he said.
“We are trying also to find solutions in the long term, not only in the short term because it’s definitely something that we are not happy with and we’ve also had issues in the past so yeah, a bit of a headache that is giving us this fuel tank now and then but yeah, we will try and put it back together this weekend and hopefully shouldn’t be any issues anytime soon,” summed up Sainz.
Since he was out of action in the grand prix itself, the Spaniard’s mind was still active in imagining his position in the race. It was frustrating certainly but also gave a different view. He recovered from the miss pretty soon though as it was not in his hands.
“I was an interested observer but obviously looking at strategy and looking at… I was constantly looking where I would have been?,” said Sainz. “Like the brain is always going to this race trace and saying I would have been here with my strategy, I would have tried to do this, this and then you just realise that it’s not worth it because you get even more frustrated and you start thinking what if, what if, what if?
“Yeah, it was frustrating from a driver’s perspective to watch the race from the barriers but it’s how it goes. And yeah, hopefully looks like we will get a bit of a heat experience also here in Austin. Yeah, I love this track, I love how this place becomes on Saturday, Sunday with the fans and how cool it is to drive it. So yeah, I’ll hopefully forget Qatar soon.
“I am just joking, by the way about putting Qatar behind. Honestly, when it comes to this kind of thing, for me, it’s a lot easier to recover. So, how do I explain it? When you have an issue that is out of your control, I feel like the day that that happens, you struggle more. You’re more frustrated, against the world, against whatever happened, because you cannot control it, you feel a bit powerless and that day, Sunday, when it happens, you really are upset.
“But then Monday morning, after a good night’s sleep you’re like ‘well, nothing could have happened, focus on the next one’. I find that relatively easy. On the other hand, when you know you’ve done a mistake, I find it more difficult to turn the page and I spend a few days dwelling a bit on what could I have done and how could I have avoided that mistake and what I could have done differently.
“Yeah, I think those are two differences. And that’s why maybe Qatar heard a bit more because I couldn’t even start and you go all the way, flying around the world, to not even start the race and you put in all that effort, it’s frustrating. But then, Monday, I was honestly ready. That’s why I said it, it was actually a bit in a joking manner,” summed up Sainz.
Here’s F1 US GP details
Here’s news on Carlos Sainz involvement in The Netflix Cup
Here’s Frederic Vasseur on larger track limits issue
Here’s Ferrari on Qatar happenings
Here’s link to a F1 Discord channel, join in to interact