Tag: Carlos Sainz Jr.

Carlos Sainz admits he found his victory in the Mexico City Grand Prix extremely emotional as he won in front of his family in the closing stages of his Ferrari career.

Ferrari’s strong form from COTA continued as he followed his second place last weekend with pole position and victory in Mexico, only briefly losing out to Max Verstappen at the start. Having re-passed the Red Bull with an impressive late move into Turn 1, Sainz pulled clear to beat Lando Norris to victory and he says it was a special result.

“I felt like this weekend was going to be a very good opportunity to win that race,” Sainz said. “I had a very good feeling coming into the weekend. Also, obviously very determined to win it. I knew coming into it that we might have a chance to win, and I’ve been focused, been on it all weekend.

“On top of that, I knew my family was coming and my best friends, my girlfriend, a lot of people were here to support me. I said maybe destiny has something ready for me this weekend, that my maybe last win with Ferrari can come in front of them with all the support that I had from them all this year and in a great podium, a great place like Mexico City. I’ve been driving well and I made it stick and you cannot imagine how happy and proud I am right now.

“It was extremely emotional. I did shed a tear [during] the Spanish anthem. For sure it’s one of the best moments in my career. My mum had never been present for a race win with me, and the fact that she was coming here this weekend, I wanted really to win a race in front of her.

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“On top of that, the way the whole weekend planned out, it was just perfect. With that move… Losing at the start and then having to fight back with Max just made everything a bit more tricky. Probably makes it taste even better because I had to work hard for it. To do this weekend in front of all of them was incredible.”

The move on Verstappen saw Sainz out-brake the Red Bull from a long way back into the first corner, but he says he had been ready to face a battle early on despite starting on pole position.

“I didn’t get a good start, but at the same time, I think Max tends to start very well,” he said. “Here is a very low-grip track, and whenever there’s low grip, the Red Bull tends to start really well, so I was kind of prepared for a scenario where Max was going to go alongside me into Turn 1. I braked as late as I can brake, and he brakes as late as me, and I had no space to go into Turn 2.

“From then on I didn’t lose my head, and I knew that every half opportunity that I got to get the lead back, I would try and do it. With Max, you need to be determined, you need to be decisive. If you’re not, you’re never going to pass him. In that case, I think I caught him a bit by surprise and I could make it stick.

“High tension at that point also because then that initiated a fight behind me that nearly got me involved from what I heard. It was an exciting moment of the race.”

Carlos Sainz dominated the Mexico City Grand Prix for a second consecutive Ferrari victory after title leader Max Verstappen served a 20s penalty for an ugly early series of incidents with championship contender Lando Norris.

Verstappen got a better launch from the front row than polesitter Sainz, and ran the Spaniard out of road at the first corner, sending the Ferrari onto the grass. Sainz saw the nudge coming and kept his foot in, handing back the place on the run down to Turn 4 but retaining second place.

The race was neutralized for five laps after a clumsy collision off the line put Yuki Tsunoda and Alex Albon out — neither driver was considered at fault — and Verstappen nailed his getaway to lead Sainz, Norris and Charles Leclerc at the restart, but the Dutchman didn’t have the pace to hold the lead. With DRS enabled, Sainz was all over the back of the Red Bull Racing car exiting the last corner ahead of lap nine, and a gutsy lunge down the inside scythed him into the lead.

Norris was next onto the tail of Verstappen, who complained his engine mode was lacking battery assist.

The Briton used DRS out of Turn 3 to launch a move around the outside of Turn 4, but in a repeat of their controversial clash at the end of last weekend’s race at COTA, Verstappen ran deep to push Norris off the road. Norris kept his foot in to retain the place and led the battle out of Turn 6 and up to the esses, but Verstappen wasn’t satisfied with the move. Braking from a long way back, he sailed down Norris’s inside and took both drivers well off the circuit to retake the place.

“This guy’s dangerous,” Norris radioed his team. “I just have to avoid a crash. It’s the same as last time. I’ll end up in the wall in a minute.”

Both moves raised the ire of the stewards, who slapped Verstappen with a 10s penalty for each.

“That’s quite impressive,” Verstappen said sarcastically after news of his first punishment. He described the second as “silly.”

“There was a lot of whingeing,” engineer Gianpiero Lambiase said. “A lot.”

With Verstappen out of the picture, the race for the podium places boiled down to a three-way fight between the Ferrari drivers and Norris. The McLaren driver opened the pit stops for the leaders, switching from mediums to hards on lap 30. Leclerc and Sainz followed on subsequent laps, retaining their positions. Sainz rejoined with a lead of just under 10s, while Norris’s gap to second stood at just under 5s. Both margins closed gradually as the stint wore on and the race headed towards a crunch in the final 10 laps.

“My opinion is that we are pushing too hard,” Sainz radioed as his lead came down beneath 6s. “Absolutely no need for it.”

With Norris pushing for more points for his title campaign, Sainz and Leclerc had no choice but to keep up the hot pace to the finish. It took until lap 59 for Norris to get within a second of Leclerc and until lap 62 for him to get DRS down the front straight. Leclerc, struggling with his rear tires, was told he would need his “best driving” to hold the position.

The Monegasque knew he needed to nail his exit from the last corner to defend against the DRS, but the critical mistake came immediately, his car snapping from underneath him on exit and sending him perilously close to the barriers. Norris sailed through into second, but by then Sainz had used the squabble to re-extend his lead to more than 7s — too big to close in less than 10 laps, securing Sainz his second of the season.

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“Honestly, I really wanted this one,” he said. “I really needed it also for myself. I’ve ben saying for a while I want one more win before leaving Ferrari, and to do it here in front of this mega crowd, it’s incredible.

“Now with four races left I want to enjoy as much as possible, and if another one comes, I will go for it.”

Norris took eight points out of Verstappen’s title lead, closing to within 47 points of the title lead.

“It was a very tough race,” he said. “I just keep my head down. I’m doing my best.

“We’re doing a very good job as a team. I think today we were probably the quickest in the end. We’ll keep our heads down. That’s all I can do for now. We focus on ourselves and keep pushing.”

Leclerc pitted for soft tires to set the fastest lap on the final tour, scoring a bonus point in third place. The score moved Ferrari past Red Bull Racing into second with a 25-point buffer in the constructors championship. The Italian team is now just 29 points behind McLaren in the battle for the lead.

“It’s a good weekend overall for the team, which is positive,” he said. “It’s been quite a few races now we’ve been coming back to the level we should be at.

“Obviously the constructors is still our target, and on weekends like this we are getting closer to it. I hope we can continue in that direction and get that constructors title, which is very important.”

Mercedes teammates George Russell and Lewis Hamilton battled aggressively through the race, Hamilton gaining a place off the line but losing it again despite some borderline defending into the first turn on lap 15. Both drivers were told they were free to race in the final stint, which was absorbed by a long duel between the silver cars, before Hamilton broke past with five laps to go, albeit 45s behind the winner.

Verstappen’s 20s penalty dropped him to 15th after making his sole pit stop at the end of lap 26, forcing him into a long recovery drive back into the points. The Mercedes drivers had been the target, but the Dutchman reported a lack of grip on his hard tires halfway through the stint, his progress slowing considerably once he rose to sixth.

Kevin Magnussen finished an excellent seventh for Haas, retaining his lofty grid position and completing an unlikely defense against the fast-finishing McLaren of Oscar Piastri.

Piastri recovered from 17th on the grid to eighth at the flag, having risen as high as fifth before making his first pit stop and setting up a late-race dash to the flag. He passed Nico Hulkenberg easily for eighth, but much like Verstappen, his pace also slowed late in the stint on hards, leaving him stranded in position.

Nico Hulkenberg finished ninth for an eight-point haul for Haas, extending its lead over RB for sixth in the constructors championship, while Pierre Gasly picked up the final point of the race for Alpine to close to within three points of Williams in eighth.

Lance Stroll finished 11th ahead of Franco Colapinto, Valtteri Bottas, Esteban Ocon, Zhou Guanyu and Liam Lawson, who had to pit a second time after a clash battling to defend 12th from Colapinto.

Sergio Perez finished 17th after a horror home race. Though he gained five places off the line, he was judged to have started too far forward of his pit box, incurring a 5s penalty. He damaged the car while battling with Lawson for 10th and lost further time squabbling with Stroll over 11th, forcing him into an early pit stop. Unable to make it to the end on that fresh set of mediums, a second stop put paid to his race.

Red Bull Racing offered him a late pit stop for softs to take a consolation point for fastest lap, but he was blitzed to the score by Leclerc by 0.873s, leaving him a pointless and distant last on the road.

Carlos Sainz admits he is struggling with conflicting emotions relating to his and Ferrari’s form before he leaves the team, after taking pole position at the Mexico City Grand Prix.

Lewis Hamilton will replace Sainz next season after Ferrari signed the seven-time world champion at the start of the year, with the Spaniard heading to Williams. With five races remaining, Sainz delivered two excellent laps to qualify on pole position in Mexico and continue Ferrari’s recent good run, but he admits the fact he believes he can fight for such results consistently until the end of the year is a bittersweet feeling.

“Very sweet, given how good the car is, how well I’m driving recently, [I am] very optimistic going into the last five races,” Sainz said. “At the same time bittersweet because it gives me the feeling that Ferrari might be in the fight for the world championship next year and I won’t be there to use it.

“I feel like I have been quite a big part of this team during the four years trying to prepare the team to fight for that championship next year. The fact that I’m driving well, being fast with the car, and I’m leaving in five races, leaves me a bit… I don’t know how to say it, but not with a very good feeling.

“But it is what it is. I’m going to try and win more races, stand on the podium for as long as I can for these five races, enjoy that, and then we will think about next year.”

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Both of Sainz’s Q3 laps were good enough for pole position in Mexico as he beat Max Verstappen and Lando Norris, and he says getting the first attempt right allowed him more margin on the second run.

“They were two really good laps, and the fact the first lap was so good and so much clear of the field allowed me to take even further risks,” he said. “In Q3 [on the final run] I added a bit of front wing as I had nothing to lose and to see if I added a bit of front end to the car I will go even quicker. But that’s what happens when the first lap is so good.

“The first lap of Q3, I didn’t take many risks with the Turn 2 curb, trying to stay away from track limits, while in the second lap I knew the first might be enough for pole and I just tried to maximize the track limits and it gave me a tenth for free which I kept for the rest of the lap.

“Two good laps, especially when you see the guys behind me, with Lando, Max and Charles [Leclerc], to be 0.2-0.3s clear, it must be some pretty solid laps.”

Leclerc led home Sainz in a dominant Ferrari one-two last weekend in Austin, and Sainz believes he has every chance of making it back-to-back victories for the Scuderia, as long as he can retain the lead at the start.

“I’m relatively confident because I know my race pace should be good tomorrow,” he said. “Probably the biggest difficulty will be the run down into Turn 1 and starting pole with the slipstream. I think you can still defend, you can still make it stick into Turn 1, starting pole, and that will be my goal tomorrow.

“I just need to make sure I do a good 0-100 [mph], which is the most important thing when you start on pole, just make sure you do a good jump. From there, obviously do the best I can to defend.

“I have two guys behind fighting for quite important things tomorrow and the run down to Turn 1 should be interesting. I have obviously less to lose in that sense and I will try and make sure I keep P1.”

Carlos Sainz will start the Mexico City Grand Prix from pole position ahead of Max Verstappen and Lando Norris after frontrunners Oscar Piastri and home favorite Sergio Perez were dumped out of qualifying in Q1.

Sainz bided his time through the qualifying hour until Q3, when he pumped in two flying laps good enough to have taken pole position for his first P1 start since last year’s Singapore Grand Prix.

“Very happy — and great couple of laps,” he said. “A lot of times around Mexico you always have the feeling that you cannot put the lap together and it’s extremely difficult with how much sliding there is, but my two laps in Q3 were pretty much identical, almost perfect.

“I just put two really solid laps in Q3, good enough for pole — very happy, because that’s not normally the case around Mexico with how tricky it is.”

With two Ferrari drivers in the top 10 but only one apiece for McLaren and Red Bull Racing, the Italian team has a golden chance to move to second in the teams standings and close in on the lead.

“Since Austin we’ve done what seems like especially on my side a step up, especially in qualifying,” Sainz said. “It seems like we’re going in the right direction. I just look forward to keeping that P1 into Turn 1, and from there hopefully our race pace should be good enough to win it.”

Verstappen recovered strongly from having his first lap time deleted to qualifying on the front row.

The Dutchman had rocketed to provisional top spot with his first lap but had his time immediately deleted for cutting Turns 2 and 3.

It didn’t deter him from pushing, however, with the Dutchman improving by almost 0.2 seconds with his second attempt to qualifying second, 0.225s behind Sainz.

“I was already under a lot of pressure to have a good qualifying, then the lap time got taken away, so it added a little more pressure,” Verstappen said. “I’m very happy to be on the front row. I honestly didn’t expect that to be possible.”

Norris had topped both Q1 and Q2 after McLaren comfortably topped FP3 earlier in the day, but the Briton hit his ceiling in the battle for pole.

After improving by 0.2 seconds between the first and second segments, he found only 0.041s in the shootout, leaving him third and 0.314s off the pace, which he described as McLaren’s maximum.

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“I’m pretty happy with third, honestly,” he said. “I felt like I got to the limit of the car quite quickly, which made us look good, but I struggled to get a lot more out of it in the final two laps.”

Charles Leclerc had been Sainz’s closest challenger after the first laps, albeit he was more than 0.3s adrift, but a mistake through the esses cost him a chance to lock out the front row for Ferrari, dropping him to fourth and just 0.005s behind Norris.

George Russell and Lewis Hamilton qualified fifth and sixth for Mercedes,

Kevin Magnussen was an impressive seventh for Haas ahead of Alpine’s Pierre Gasly and Alex Albon’s Williams, while a mistake on his final lap left Nico Hulkenberg a distant 10th.

Yuki Tsunoda qualified 11th after crashing out of the session with less than 15s on the clock in Q2. The Japanese driver took too much speed into the right-handed Turn 12 leading into the stadium section and slid off the road and into the barriers. The RB driver had been just 0.081s short of a spot in Q1 and had set a personal-best time in sector two when he crashed.

The smash also hampered teammate Liam Lawson, who qualified 12th and just 0.033s further back and had just set a personal-best time in the first sector.

Aston Martin teammates Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll qualified 13th and 14th, while Valtteri Bottas, in just his seventh appearance outside Q1 for the season, will line up alongside Franco Colapinto in 16th.

Surprise knockouts Oscar Piastri and Sergio Perez will start on the penultimate row of the grid after dual qualifying shockers.

Piastri, who topped FP3 hours earlier, struggled to string together a clean lap. His first was scuppered by a lock-up at Turn 4, which sent him wide of the apex. His second was deleted for exceeding track limits at Turn 12. That deleted time wouldn’t have been enough to make Q2, but the Australian figured it cost him around a second.

Piastri lined up for a second attempt on the same used tires, but he failed to improve on his own personal bests in the first two sectors and only marginally improved in the third, dropping to 17th by the end of the session in his first Q1 elimination for the year.

Sergio Perez showed less potential, his 18th-place knockout and fifth Q1 knockout down to a lack of faith in the car.

“I cannot brake for low speed,” he radioed early in the session, reporting a lack of grip that didn’t improve even as track conditions improved rapidly.

It left him 1.106s off poll and 0.808s behind teammate Verstappen.

Esteban Ocon and Zhou Guanyu will start from the back row of the grid in 19th and 20th.

Carlos Sainz ended second practice at the Mexico City Grand Prix fastest after the session was shortened by a heavy crash by George Russell.

Title leader Max Verstappen also his trouble, retiring from the session with a recurring power unit problem.

Russell took too big a bite out of the curb at Turn 8 and bottomed out, sending his car spinning off the road and crashing heavily into the barriers on the outside of Turn 9. Looking winded, he clambered from the car without assistance but was taken to the medical center for precautionary check-ups, after which he was declared fit.

The barriers weren’t so fortunate, and 23 minutes — more than a quarter of the extended 90-minute session — were lost to repairs to the Tecpro barriers to allow the session to resume.

Running didn’t last long for Verstappen, however, who was told to retire his car with only four untimed laps on the board with the same power unit problem that forced him to end FP1 early. Earlier in the session he had reported hearing “a weird noise in the engine.”

“This noise is very disturbing,” he radioed. “This can’t be normal.”

He also reported brake problems before pitting.

With Alex Albon failing to take part in the session owing to incomplete repairs from his big FP1 crash, 17 drivers were left to continue with the rest of the session.

It was crucial for Pirelli that running could get back underway, with each driver required to embark on a painstaking planned program dictated by the tire supplier to validate its 2025 tire compounds. Each driver was given two sets of tires — one of the three compounds in use this weekend and another corresponding compound from next year’s allocation.

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All tires were unmarked and without their usual identifying colors, and each driver completed an identical series of performance runs and race simulations with matching fuel loads.

Only the five drivers who handed their cars to stand-in drivers during FP1 — Lando Norris, Charles Leclerc, Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso and Zhou Guanyu — were allowed to break from the program with a fresh set of medium tires to make up for lost lap time, though what had originally been a 30-minute allowance was shortened to just the final few minutes of the session.

The blind Pirelli testing program meant times were impossible to compare and unrepresentative of the rest of the weekend’s running.

Oscar Piastri was second and 0.178s behind Sainz, with Yuki Tsunoda third for the second straight session, lapping 0.179 off the pace.

Charles Leclerc and Lando Norris followed on the medium tires, with Kevin Magnussen, Lewis Hamilton, Valtteri Bottas, Sergio Perez and Liam Lawson completing the top 10.

Fernando Alonso finished the session 11th ahead of Nico Hulkenberg, Esteban Ocon, Lance Stroll, Franco Colapinto, Pierre Gasly, Zhou Guanyu and the crashed-out Russell.

The untimed Verstappen and Albon were 19th and 20th.