Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz was still not happy after getting a podium at the Hungarian Grand Prix.
Sainz took the fourth podium of his career after Sebastian Vettel was disqualified. But even that didn’t please the Spaniard, as he thought they should have challenged for the win.
“I think today, it just wasn’t meant to be,” Sainz said
“I think the start was great. I put myself in a very strong position after that, then we had the bad luck of the traffic in the pit lane, which made us lose a lot of time behind Tsunoda and Latifi.
“We had a very strong stint on the medium. We put ourselves back in contention with that strong stint, with that overcut, and then the stint on the hard – we struggled on the hard this weekend for some reason.
“I had to push a lot on it to try and defend from Hamilton at the beginning of the hard (stint). Then the hard degraded, then I had to do a lot of fuel saving at the end when fighting with Lewis and Fernando, and the lapped car there with Daniel Ricciardo didn’t help for staying in the podium (places),” Sainz explained.
“But it’s how it goes. If you would have told me yesterday that I would finish P4 and I would be fighting for a podium, I would have taken it. But at the same time today, after seeing Esteban and Sebastian in front of me get the podium and the win, I felt like we should have been in the fight for that win,” he concluded.
Fine margins
Sainz and Ferrari are right to feel they could have done better. On paper, the Ferrari is faster than the Alpine or the Aston Martin. It also didn’t help that they lost Charles Leclerc, who retired from the race on Lap 1.
Sainz and Ferrari will look to regroup and come to Belgium stronger. Thanks to Sainz, Ferrari are ahead of McLaren after Hungary. They will hope to put some distance between them and the Woking outfit come Spa.
Read more: Carlos Sainz talks about competing against McLaren – “One of the hardest cars to overtake”