“I Paid the Price”: Carlos Sainz Reacts to George Russell Error, Blaming Only One Thing for US GP Outcome

Anti-climactic is how Carlos Sainz’s race has to be described during his visit to Austin. His short race at the Circuit of The Americas was the second race on a spin that ended frustratingly for the Spaniard. It was surely unlucky and heartbreaking for the Ferrari driver.

On the last race weekend at Suzuka, Carlos grabbed a lovely P3 in qualifying after some great driving. He was pumped up for the race but things did not go nearly as planned. Amidst the heavy torrential rains in Japan, the Spaniard failed to complete the first lap and crashed out of the race.

This time around, the story got even worse for Sainz. After an unexpected pole position in qualifying, the Spaniard was expected to give Max Verstappen a hard time in the front of the grid. But it wasn’t meant to be as he crashed out again. This time his car touched George Russell’s and he spun.

Visibly frustrated, Carlos spoke on the F1 post-race show. He said, “Driver mistakes are driver mistakes, and the problem is that I paid the price and it follows the trend of the whole year with lap 1 that doesn’t allow me to do the race or doesn’t allow me to fight for the win or doesn’t allow me to keep learning from the car which is extremely frustrating and disappointing.”

“In so many races that I don’t even complete one lap so that is also the way to make forward on the race day which shows how frustrated I am and how my year has been. The speed is there, it’s just a very poor year in terms of luck and things happening.”

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When it happened at Suzuka, it was a case of bad luck with all the adverse weather conditions adding to it. The second time makes it a case of no luck. His good performances have been going to waste and he’ll be hoping for a break from the bad luck in Mexico next weekend.

Carlos Sainz is livid and blames the Mercedes driver for his DNF at Austin

It must have been painful for the Spaniard to have earned a pole position, and to aim for at least a podium at the end of the race; only to not make it past Turn 1.

He was confident about who the culprit was for the DNF. Sainz said, “I don’t think you need many words, I think you need images to see exactly what happened and the images speak for themselves. I was in the middle of a fight with Max into Turn 1 and suddenly one guy that wasn’t in the battle came from nowhere and bumped into me so that’s it.

“Our starts haven’t been great because we have an inherent problem with this car, normally P2 in Austin is better than P1. We’ve seen that in many, many years here. My start wasn’t too bad if you compare it to the Mercs, it was Max [Verstappen] that got out really good.”

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The teams head out to Mexico City next weekend for the 20th race of the season. Carlos will be seething with anger and an urge to do well. Hopefully, he does well the next time around.