Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz was a shock exit in the first round of qualifying Saturday in Abu Dhabi and credited the likes of Mercedes and Alpine in assisting with his early exit.
Sainz’s weekend got off to a tricky start when in FP2 he bottomed out on Turn 3, spinning into the barriers and ending his session inside the opening 10 minutes.
But things got worse for the Spaniard in qualifying as he found himself on the brink of a Q1 elimination, which was confirmed as he remained 16th at the end of the stage.
Sainz was clearly aggrieved and exclaimed over team radio that several of his competitors impeded him during his final run in Q1.
“I had so much traffic,” he told his engineer over the radio en route back to the pits.
“I think people, the Mercedes did it on purpose. Did it turn five ahead of me, the Alpine turn two-three.”
Out of the car, Sainz also laid blame on his team’s handling of qualifying, which he felt landed them in a position of vulnerability when it came to the aforementioned traffic.
“We just simply went out too late in the last run we and found ourselves in the middle of a mess with the traffic and everything,” he issued.
“We had a problem at the front wing and for some reason we went out the last ones when we were clearly under pressure and then we found a lot of cars and traffic in Sector 1 and 2.
“We need a clean lap, we need a clean Q1, we didn’t get it so we’re out.”
The crash in FP2 and traffic in Q1 aside, Sainz believes overall the weekend so far has been a struggle on his side of the Ferrari garage.
“It’s been a very tough weekend for us, not only because of the crash but overall pace hasn’t been great,” he added.
“The car doesn’t feel bad, it’s just the stopwatch is not looking very good.”
Ferrari are locked in a battle with Mercedes for second in the Constructors’ Championship and currently lie four points adrift from the Silver Arrows.
But despite Lewis Hamilton’s Q2 exit and Charles Leclerc’s impressive run to second, Sainz admitted that his poor qualifying was “clearly not what we [Ferrari] needed today.”
Throw in George Russell’s fourth-place finish in qualifying and Ferrari’s task of overcoming Mercedes in the championship looks that little bit more difficult.
To that end, Sainz is focused on trying to climb the order come lights out on Sunday for the 58-lap encounter to conclude the 2023 campaign.
“We are going to try to recover, I think we have the potential for sure to recover and do better,” he concluded.
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