Carlos Sainz Compares His Season to Bottas’ Gap to Lewis Hamilton in the Championship

The hybrid engine era of Formula 1 has been dominated by Mercedes, followed by Ferrari and Red Bull. However, the 2020 season has seen some exciting changes on that front.

Ferrari’s engine woes and Alex Albon’s continuous struggle has resulted in a gap of barely 27 points between P4 and P11. With 6 more races to go and the unexpected nature of this season, these positions are going to deliver an interesting fight.

Carlos Sainz can still be a threat to his competitors

Carlos Sainz finished the 2019 season at a strong P6 as the ‘best of the rest’. Although currently poised at P11, a total of 27 points separate him and P4.

Sainz explained that a normal race win for them is eight points. This leaves him three races behind his direct competitors. “I am a bit far away,” he said in an interview.

“[The points are] a normal race win. Which for us when we are fighting for top sixes a race win is eight points so you could argue I am three races behind my direct competitors, two or three ‘race wins’ away from them.”

He drew an interesting parallel with Valtteri Bottas. Moreover, his position of retaining ‘best of the rest’ status is similar to Valtteri’s position in the championship race.

He said, “If you would say it’s equivalent to [Valtteri] Bottas being 50-75 points off Lewis [Hamilton]. Is he in the title fight? Will he be in the title fight being 50-75 points off? Maybe. But I have a very low, small chance.”

2020 plaguing Sainz and the like

The McLaren racer, Carlos Sainz, has suffered a frustrating year, to say the least. With the unfortunate pile up in Tuscany, a tire failure at Silverstone, a power unit failure at Belgium, and the infamous crash at the Russian Grand Prix, things have not been going as planned.

He said, “Well it’s annoying, you guys know how competitive I am and how I consider myself to be doing actually a decent year and a good year in F1 – if it wasn’t for the Russia mistake – I think I’m doing my best year in F1 to today and performing at a very high level”.

The Spaniard mentioned that a lot of things haven’t gone his way, and this year particularly has been weird and strange. He was wearing his emotions on his sleeves while talking about lack of momentum and inconsistent results.

He said, “It is annoying yes, I find it particularly annoying, as I think I should have at least 30-40 points more than what I have.”

Even though Carlos Sainz is not very optimistic about his last season at McLaren, the unpredictable nature of this season has left P6 wide open and Sainz is barely an arm’s length away.

With just 17 points between him and P6, there is a good chance he will match his 2019 result. If the Formula 1 gods shine upon him, he could poach P4 instead.

READ MORE- WATCH: Carlos Sainz Crashes Out of the Russian Grand Prix With a Costly Error