Carlos Sainz and Oscar Piastri reflect on the Lap 1 incident in F1 Belgian GP where they discuss on they could have done things differently.
It wasn’t the start either McLaren’s Piastri and or Ferrari’s Sainz wanted in F1 Belgian GP where the Australian tried a move at Turn 1 on the inside but made contact with the Spaniard who locked-up while fighting with Lewis Hamilton on the outside.
It was an unfortunate situation in a corner known for the such incidents. The stewards deemed it to be racing incident but Sainz wasn’t too pleased with the optimistic move. “I was on the attack with Lewis and I think I pretty much had the move done into Turn 1,” he said to media. “I hit the apex cleanly and everything.
“But unfortunately I think Oscar was trying to do a bit of an optimistic move on me I think. A bit of a shame because when you review the past races here in Spa and you know what’s been the difficult turn one incidents it’s exactly that. Everyone who tried the inside line into turn one normally generates an incident or a crash and tries to really make it around there normally generates an incident or a crash. And this time it was my turn to receive it.”
“I didn’t go deep. I made perfectly the apex and passed Lewis. If you look at my onboard, yes, I do lock up, but I don’t go deep into the corner. At some point someone needs to back out. He’s the guy who is alongside my rear-right that I think needs to back off the move and not me and let him pass me into turn one, especially when I’m pretty much having my move done with Lewis,” summed up Sainz.
On the flipside, Piastri agreed that he wouldn’t have gone for the move if they raced again but he reckoned Sainz could have done things differently too in that regard. “I think it’s quite firmly in the category of a lap one, turn one incident,” he said. “I got a good start and put my nose alongside.
“And then when we got to the braking zone, Carlos moves a bit to the right and locked up and I also had to try to avoid that a bit. From that to the apex, my options were quite limited in where I could go. I’ll look back over it more and see if there was more I could have done but just a shame that we’re standing here and not still on-track.
“From Carlos’s point of view, the move to the right surprised me a bit. For myself, I think from there I was quite limited. Maybe I could have braked a bit later and been further alongside. But it’s very easy to say that with hindsight. I think once once I was in that position, it was quite hard to either go forward or go backwards.
“And I was just kind of stuck. So I tried to do the best that I could from that position but there wasn’t much I could do. It’s a very tight Turn 1, Carlos also didn’t have many options from where Lewis was either, so it’s a shame,” summed up Piastri.
While Piastri retired straight up, Sainz continued on but lost ground due to suspected damage and was forced to retire. The team carried on in the hope of a red flag to fix the car but that didn’t come and so they decided to retire the car. “I don’t know, because it’s quite difficult because you’re losing downforce,” said Frederic Vasseur. “But it’s not just the downforce, is the balance of the car.
“And we never did the calculation of a potential lap time with X points of downforce and X points of balance, but it was a lot. We were just expecting a red flag at one stage to be able to fix it, with the first shower, but when the shower came without the red flag, we decided to stop it.”
Here’s how F1 Belgian GP panned out