Carlos Sainz thought drivers – including Oscar Piastri – were being very aggressive in F1 Miami GP amid their clash and subsequent penalty.
It didn’t start well for Ferrari’s Sainz in F1 Miami GP after a fast-starter Red Bull’s Sergio Perez came across and nearly took him and others out. The evasive action dropped the Spaniard behind Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and McLaren’s Piastri.
Post that, Sainz had to push through as much against Piastri and then Leclerc, after the Australian managed to get past the Monegasque in the first stint. The safety car situation brought the Spaniard and the Australian together on track again.
Sainz was chasing Piastri in the fight for fourth and the two came in contact twice. At first, the Spaniard was seemingly pushed off which was deemed as no further action. And then, the Ferrari driver made the move at Turn 17 but braked way too late.
That meant Piastri made slight contact and broke his front wing to pit and drop back. Sainz was eventually to be blamed as he had a 5s time penalty which dropped him behind Perez in the order. Post-race, the Spaniard talked about the aggressive driving.
He felt all of the drivers were a bit too aggressive on Sunday. “There is many things to assess, first of all Checo came like a torpedo at the start and nearly took us all at once. I had to take avoiding when I was P2 at the start and I came out of Turn 1 at fourth, that already put us in the backfoot because it is not the same when racing at P2 than P4,” said Sainz to media.
“I saved my tyres and extended but we missed the safety car by one lap which would have meant another win probably. This meant another bit of frustration and then frustration also with Oscar for running me wide off the track and having a bit of contact there and then I realised that he was trying to be aggressive because everyone was being aggressive in the race.
“If I need to make a move on Oscar, you could see we were struggling on the straights this weekend and I need to send one on the inside, I did it. We had good pace towards the end, catching Max and Charles but it was too late as I lost too much time with Oscar,” summed up Sainz, while Piastri played it diplomatically while not adding on the incident.
“I was happy with the start,” said Piastri. “The fact that I could get past Leclerc as well was unexpected coming into the race. From that point, I was quite happy and was reasonably comfortable with him behind me there, just the timing of the Safety Car wasn’t ideal. I’ve not seen the incident to be honest, so yeah, I need to have a look at it first.
“I need to see, we were particularly close to the apex but yeah…,” summed up Piastri. While the two drivers were not too chatty about the incident, their team bosses felt it was more on the racing incident line than anyone to be blamed for it, even though the stewards put the blame on Sainz for it.
“It was a good fight,” said Frederic Vasseur. “It was the same the two or three laps before, Turn 11, when Piastri went straight and Carlos was in front. If Carlos takes the corner, they crash together. I think we have collectively to decide where we want to go on this one, but I think the two incidents were very similar, except that Piastri tried to take the corner on the second one.”
And Andea Stella added: “I think he comes away with a lot of positives and the fact that it was the collision with Carlos, actually I think it was a bit of a – Carlos, he was a little late in braking, he had a bit of an oversteer contact with Oscar, I think that was really a racing incident and it doesn’t detract anything of the weekend that Oscar has been able to pull off.”
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