Sainz Defeat In Australia 'Must Have Hurt' Leclerc Brundle Asserts

Wednesday, 27 March 2024 at 16:30

Martin Brundle suggested that being defeated by Carlos Sainz, who hasn't even fully recovered from surgery, "must have hurt" Charles Leclerc.

The story of the most recent race weekend at Albert Park Circuit is that Max Verstappen and Red Bull's winning streak has ended.

And it has been ended yet again by the same man who did it last year- Carlos Sainz. Moreover, the Spaniard did it just two weeks after appendix surgery.

He drove a fantastic weekend and outperformed his 26-year-old teammate Charles Leclerc from the start of the qualifying until the end of the race.

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The Monegasque driver highlighted his teammate's performance after the end of the race when he said Sainz "has just been better." Martin Brundle wrote in his column for Sky Sports F1:

"Charles Leclerc, second in the sister Ferrari, had the good grace to say that Sainz had been the faster driver in qualifying and the race."

Such performance wasn't at all expected from the 29-year-old. Even Brundle, who was at the starting grid ahead of the race and personally talked to Sainz, suggested he "looked fragile and moved more slowly."

However, as the former F1 driver also said, there was nothing slow about the Spanish Ferrari driver's performance. He believes it must have hurt Leclerc, who was beaten by an injured teammate.

"It must have hurt him that his walking-wounded team-mate, minus his appendix but carrying some scars, had outperformed him."

Ferrari decided to replace Sainz and keep Leclerc for 2025, but the Spanish driver has been the quicker one so far this season, and many fans on social media have been very quick to point that out.

Nevertheless, Brundle added it was a very well-executed weekend by the team from Maranello, which scored a one-two ahead of McLaren's Lando Norris, who could have potentially been faster than Leclerc.

"And a new-found calm in the Ferrari team meant that the race strategies were efficiently delivered, particularly to keep Lando Norris at bay in the McLaren."