Carlos Sainz said he gave absolutely everything to finish runners up behind AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly in a thrilling Italian GP at Monza. The Spaniard was sitting comfortably in second behind Lewis Hamilton in the early stages and expected to lead when Hamilton received a 10-second stop-go penalty.
“I’m especially happy with the way I raced, I gave absolutely everything and didn’t leave anything on the table after we were out there battling our way back,” Sainz said. “During the safety car I felt like I’d be leading the race but the red flag gave everyone an opportunity to reset their tyres. I felt honestly angry but after that, it was head down and we nearly made it back to Pierre.”
“I had a chance to win the race, then came the red flag, which hit me hard. Another bit of bad luck when I was running comfortably in second but I can’t be too disappointed,” he added. “Four-tenths behind across the start-finish line with the DRS [Drag Reduction System] would have been a cruise past Pierre [Gasly] but I prefer not to think about that!”
“It’s incredible I’m halfway disappointed with P2, I wouldn’t have believed I would’ve got a chance to fight for victory today. We were very, very close, so honestly, in a normal race, we would have got P2 behind Lewis because we had really good pace. It’s what we deserved.” Sainz continued. “We had a bit of bad luck with the safety car but we did a good job to recover. We’ve been super quick all weekend and I felt like I could dominate the midfield pretty easily so I’m happy with that. We only needed one more lap!”
