MONACO — Carlos Sainz said he should not have openly criticised Ferrari during the Monaco Grand Prix, even though he still thought after the race his team’s strategy had been needlessly cautious.
Sainz was frustrated with his team’s pit call during the dry portion of the Monaco race, when he was hoping to gain a position over Alpine’s Esteban Ocon, who eventually finished on the podium in third.
Sainz questioned the timing of his stop and when he emerged behind Ocon but ahead of Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton his frustrated radio message was played over the F1 world broadcast feed.
“What the f—! This is exactly what we talked about,” Sainz said, adding “I don’t care about Hamilton, I was quick!” when told the stop had been timed to cover him from dropping behind the seven-time world champion.
Sainz would go on to finish eighth after spinning during the rain shower which hit late in the race.
Ferrari’s strategic calls, and the large number of blunders they make compared to rivals Red Bull and Mercedes, has been a talking point of the last few years.
Sainz, who said last year he thinks the media singles out Ferrari’s strategy for unwarranted criticism, said he should have handled the situation differently.
“Monaco first of all is a bit of a lottery and today was a bit of a lottery for everyone,” he said after the race. “Probably I just got the worst out of it.
“The first pitstop is debatable. I will go back and review it because obviously I was very quick on that in-lap and I felt like I still had laptime to come in clean air. I had been doing all that [tyre] management, to suddenly be pitted left me frustrated.
“But I shouldn’t have showed it on the radio first of all.”
Sainz said Ferrari had been too conservative with the call and he felt instead of looking behind at Hamilton, he could have got by Ocon too with different calls.
“We had a bit of an eventful race, always chasing Ocon and on the gearbox of Ocon. I saved my tyres, we were on the hard tyres and it looked like he had a slow pitstop, I was flying on the in-lap and we decided to go for the overcut.
“With the pace I was going, maybe we should have been a bit more patient but it’s how it is.”