After the Renault Sport Formula 1 Team‘s fourth double points finish of the season, Carlos Sainz Jr. hailed the result as “another step forward” for the constructor, as they look to score their first top four finish in the Constructors’ Championship for ten years.
Sainz Jr. finished behind team-mate Nico Hülkenberg in Canada, as Renault cemented their status as best of the rest behind the leading three teams.
“It was a good day for the team and ten points for the Constructors’ Championship,” Sainz Jr. said, echoing Hülkenberg’s sentiments.
“It’s another step forward and we had a good race pace compared to the rest of the midfield.”
The Spaniard, who finished just 1.7 seconds behind seventh placed man Hülkenberg, said that the race was “largely quiet”. Along with the German, his early race progress was stunted by Esteban Ocon; the pair managed to leapfrog the Frenchman after a problem with the rear jack extended his pitstop time.
Sainz Jr. also lost time when being lapped by runner-up Valtteri Bottas. The Mercedes AMG Petronas Motorsport driver ran wide when trying to execute the move first time round on lap 56, forcing the Renault to slow down again later that lap.
“We wanted to bring both cars home in the points and we’ll certainly enjoy the result even though it was a largely quiet race for us,” he added.
“The team did a solid job [on Saturday] and again [on Sunday] to jump the Force India. We thought we were going to have a lot more degradation and in the end we came back with good tyre management.”
Similarly to his team-mate, Sainz Jr. managed 55 laps on the super-soft tyres after shedding his hyper-softs on lap 15.
