Renault Sport Formula One Team‘s Carlos Sainz Jr. helped the team to a double-points finish in today’s Chinese Grand Prix.
The Spaniard finished the race in ninth place, earning him two points and bringing his total up to three overall and leaving him in twelfth in the Driver’s Championship.
Sainz Jr. had good pace throughout the race, but ultimately finished three places behind team-mate Nico Hulkenberg, who crossed the line as best of the rest in sixth place.
After making a good start, Sainz claimed he was squeezed a little by one of the Aston Martin Red Bull Racing drivers and that this dropped him back a few places.
He was able to capitalise on a safety car that was brought out by the Red Bull Toro Rosso Honda drivers colliding to make an extra pitstop, but his final stint had high tyre degradation, meaning he was forced to ease off and conserve them for the late stages of the race.
“Double points for the team again this year! Well done!” he commented.
“I made a really good start moving on one of the Red Bulls but he squeezed me out on the first lap, moving back a couple of places behind Nico.
“From there we managed to cover two-stops with the aid of the safety car. On my last stint, traffic behind Alonso and Magnussen degraded my tyres too much and I had to save them in order to have a better opportunity at the end of the race.
“It was really close with Vettel… had there been another lap I would have had him. Overall I’m happy to score more points but I still need to work hard with my engineers to get full confidence with the car.”
