Carlos Sainz says nothing worked for him in F1 Chinese GP and it was strange after showing pace previously, but Alexander Albon enjoyed run in the points.
Having had a good run in testing and F1 Australian GP weekend until the crash, Williams’ Sainz faced his first big challenge in Chinese GP where he was clueless about the pace deficit to teammate Albon. From the get go, it was difficult for the Spaniard to sync with the car and extract the maximum.
He had two chances in sprint and the main race, but it didn’t work at all, even though he went to a similar route that Albon took during the weekend. This was the first drop for Sainz with Williams where nothing worked and no matter any change made, it didn’t deliver the desired result.
He ended up out of points when teammate was comfortably in it. “Pace wasn’t there, we did a set-up change to help the overall deg of the front tyre but unfortunately on my side, the pace just wasn’t there,” said Sainz to media. “I struggled with lot of graining in the first stint, then in the second stint we went to the hard which was supposed to be more withstanding to it.
“We did a lot of set-up changes that on my side of the garage, what Alex and I did were pretty similar, on his side [the car] seemed to respond well to the front graining and he was a lot stronger, on my side it didn’t seem to help much. So yeah, a lot of analysis to be done in the next few days because clearly I wasn’t competitive, I wasn’t fast.
“A sprint weekend never helps the learning because you cannot test much, but also it was my first race with the team, obviously I couldn’t do Melbourne and I hope that we can get the learning but my feeling is that it was something fundamental that I did wrong or we did wrong. All weekend I have really been 2-3 tenths off and whenever I jump in this car, immediately I would just swing, it would be done.
“I didn’t have to think to drive the car fast, it came natural and this week, it didn’t matter what I did, I was just graining the tyres and I was slow. It is something that we just have to see because ever since I jumped in the car I have been really-really quick – since Abu Dhabi last year, Bahrain test – but as soon as we came here, we struggled but we will have a look at it.
“In Bahrain, I wasn’t even pushing and lap time came, it came natural and I didn’t have to navigate and I went quick, so something to definitely look into and we will analyse and see what we can do. I am sure it is not an easy car to understand, especially on a track like this that is so sensitive to the tyres, but at the same time we need to still go through this week with a lot analysis and make few changes and lets see where the pace in Japan,” summed up Sainz.
For a moment, it looked like that Albon wouldn’t score after he lost out to Haas’ Esteban Ocon on the line. But he stuck to his guns behind the Frenchman and built a gap behind. It was crucial to do so especially since Ocon’s teammate Oliver Bearman was flying through the cars in the second stint.
Albon was further helped by Yuki Tsunoda deciding to pit the second time. He ended up ninth and was promoted to seventh due to Ferrari disqualification. “Very happy,” he said to TV media. “It was a strange race in many ways, as we were so comfortable on that first set, first stint – it kind of cornered us as the hard tyre out-performed everyone’s expectations so we probably stayed out a little bit too long.
“We were quick and we were catching the cars at the end of the race but the deg wasn’t big enough that I couldn’t make the difference really. We did catch up, but yeah, still very happy. We have come to a track that is quite weak for our car historically and it still didn’t really suit us compared to Melbourne at least. But we still got points out of the weekend, which is really important.
“I’m also really happy with the team, the way we came from yesterday, really struggling with the front tyres… We changed the whole philosophy of the car and still had really good race pace, so that just shows we are understanding the car quite well,” summed up Albon.
