Ferrari Had 'Nothing To Lose' With Risky Strategy According To Sainz
F1Monday, 27 November 2023 at 18:00
Updated at Monday, 27 November 2023 at 18:12
Scuderia Ferrari Carlos Sainz reflected on his 2023 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix Race unsuccessful strategy after losing the Championship battle against Mercedes.
While his teammate Charles Leclerc started from the front row, Carlos Sainz had to start from P16 after failing qualification. Therefore, he needed to opt for a riskier strategy to overtake at least one Mercedes driver.
The Spanish F1 driver started the race on a hard compound tire as he wanted to prolong his stint as much as possible in order to wait for an unexpected safety car that could bring him into the race. He told the media:
"We started on the Hard expecting the car to help us do a one-stop. I feel like we've seen many times this year, whenever we started on Harder compounds with our car we struggled a lot."
While he admitted starting on the hard compound tire did not seem like the best choice, the 29-year-old added he had nothing to lose.
"We had nothing to lose starting in P16 and we gave it a go but again it didn't work for us. The harder compound at the beginning of the race with the dirty air, I was just sliding."
Similar to Mercedes, where George Russell drove a perfect race competing for a podium in front, and Lewis Hamilton struggled in the back, Ferrari also had two very opposite performances on the two sides of the garage in Abu Dhabi.
The end of the season was not kind to Sainz. The Spaniard suffered two unlucky incidents in Free Practice Sessions ahead of both the Las Vegas and Abu Dhabi Grand Prix destroying his car in both of them.
"The last two weekends, this last weekend in general, hasn't gone how I expected or how we wanted to finish the year."
Ferrari ended up losing the battle for second place in the Constructors' Championship by 3 points to Mercedes. Sainz shared his disappointment:
"Honestly [I'm] very disappointed and obviously not happy given how close it was in the end with the Constructors’ Championship."
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