Carlos Sainz Jr was delighted to claim ninth during the Canadian Grand Prix, especially after his qualifying crash and subsequent grid penalty for a gearbox penalty meant he started down in twentieth.
The Scuderia Toro Rosso driver drove strongly to move up the order, gaining a number of places after a perfectly timed pit stop, and believed that even without his lowly grid slot, he would not have been able to be much higher up the finishing order at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve than what actually transpired.
Sainz praised the hard work of the team for the result, and is happy that the STR11 seems to be constantly improving to enable him to get good results.
“A really good race for me today here in Montreal!” said Sainz. “If you had told me before the race that I would have finished in P9 after starting P20, I would’ve probably signed immediately!
“I’m really happy to have made it back into the points, I enjoyed it a lot out there. We chose the right moment for our first pit-stop, going for the undercut, and I then did five or six qualifying laps on the Soft tyre, which allowed me to overtake five or six cars and keep up with the Force India.
“Even if I hadn’t made yesterday’s mistake in qualifying, more than a P8 this weekend was impossible, so we can be happy and satisfied with our weekend. A result like today’s shows that we are strong and that we are constantly improving.
“Today we did the right strategy and good pit-stops, so I’d like to congratulate the whole team for this weekend, it’s been great!”
