"It's a relief!" he laughs after a solid sixth-place finish, four spots ahead of McLaren team-mate Lando Norris; Norris bemoans overtaking difficulty
Sunday 16 August 2020 20:03, UK
Carlos Sainz described his relief after belatedly delivering a result to give him confidence in future races after coming in sixth in the Spanish Grand Prix.
The Spaniard delivered in Barcelona, moving up one place from seventh spot in qualifying, outperforming fellow McLaren driver Lando Norris and challenging the quicker Racing Points of Sergio Perez and Lance Stroll.
And the result was just the tonic he needed after feeling his performances had largely gone unrewarded at the start of the season.
"It went well, to be honest. It's a relief because I didn't have the start of the season that I wanted," Sainz told Sky F1.
"A lot of things were going outside my control so to get a confidence building result like this one, putting on a fight with the Racing Points towards the end there was nice to see in my home Grand Prix.
"Definitely changing the engine two nights ago made a big difference to my qualifying performance and the race performance, picking up a bit more power thanks to that.
"Then nothing went wrong. We've been having three consecutive races with eight-second pit stops so to finally get a race with normal pit stops is good news for the mechanics. We'll all feel a lot more confident into the future."
And after a last-ditch battle for his position with Red Bull's Alex Albon - who called his manoeuvring 'dangerous' over team radio - the future Ferrari driver defended himself robustly.
"It would be bad to say you want to get him off the track but you want to get him on the dirty part of the track," said Sainz.
"I didn't want him off the road, I did give him that last bit of space but when you're on the inside you are entitled to run everyone wide if you want to.
"It was the only chance I had to stay ahead of him - I needed to put that extra bit of aggression there to hold on. We're racing drivers - what I did is within the rules, it's on the limit but he would have done the same to me."
Sainz' team-mate Norris admitted he felt he couldn't have done any better, and stated his satisfaction at making the top ten.
He said: "A tough race. We had really good pace in the car but, as usual in Spain, it was very difficult to overtake.
"You can only really overtake in one corner, and if the car in front gets a good enough exit out of the final corner and there is a train of cars, then it's pretty much impossible even if you are quicker.
"It's a shame - because the car felt good. It came alive a lot towards the end. It would've been nice to use a little bit more but tenth was, I think, the best we could've done today, so I'm happy to be in the points."
