Carlos Sainz Jr ended a disappointing weekend at the Bahrain International Circuit with a three-place grid penalty for the next round in Russia after colliding with Lance Stroll at the first turn on lap thirteen and ending both of their races.
The Scuderia Toro Rosso driver was deemed responsible for the incident with the Williams Martini Racing driver, which occurred as he exited the pits, although the Spaniard felt otherwise over the radio. Stroll was out on the spot but the damage was enough for Sainz to pull off the circuit not long after, with the incident bringing out the safety car.
It ended a poor weekend for both himself and the team that was blighted with reliability issues, something they will be looking to rectify in Russia at the end of the month where Sainz is aiming for a return to the points.
“It definitely hasn’t been a good weekend for us,” said Sainz. “We’ve had reliability problems on Friday and yesterday, which meant that today we had to do a race starting from the back.
“It started well, and recovered from P16 to P11 during the first lap – we were definitely catching the points positions there! Unfortunately, all of a sudden after the pit stop I was involved in an incident with Lance and that was the end of my race.
“The weekend ends with a DNF, but weekends like this one always happen at some point throughout the year in F1… This is racing! On the positive side, the car feels very good to drive and we can fight for points regularly, so I look forward to the next races.”
