'Quite clear that it cost us' - Sainz on Leclerc battles

Carlos Sainz wants to review the fight with Charles Leclerc at the start of the Chinese Grand Prix after feeling both lost positions focusing on each other.

The two Ferrari teammates had a small collision in the Sprint on Saturday, with Leclerc saying he felt Sainz had crossed the line in the way they race each other but expected the issue to be resolved easily with pre-race discussions. However, Turn 1 on the opening lap then saw Leclerc appear to run Sainz wide and both George Russell and Nico Hulkenberg were able to take advantage.

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“A bit of a tough race for us,” Sainz said. “First of all I think we need to review the start because we had a strange line there through Turn 1 and Turn 2, which meant the Mercedes and the Haas passed both Charles and I which cost us probably a bit of race time.

“We had an issue there at the start with both cars going wide and two cars that shouldn’t overtake us overlook us. From then on we had to stop very early for the hard (tire).

“The timing of the safety car wasn’t ideal, because everyone could put on a new tire in front of me and I was left with a very old tire for the last stint and I had to nurse the tire home for a P5. Considering all this, I think P5 was the maximum, so not too bad.”

When pushed on whether he felt Leclerc had driven aggressively at the start in response to the incident in the Sprint, Sainz replied: “I prefer not to comment, but it’s obviously quite clear that it cost us both two positions so in the end it helped neither of us.”

Leclerc himself dismissed the incident as “just the start, it’s always very difficult with the tires, so it is what it is”, and from his point of view, the pair had already discussed Saturday’s incident and cleared the air, even though Sainz had originally disagreed that talks took place.

“Yes, we spoke briefly before qualifying and much longer after qualifying with Fred [Vasseur] and everything is fine,” Leclerc said. “I'm not going into details but, as I said, sometimes I went over the limit and sometimes he went over the limit, but it's part of the game and now we've had a discussion and it's fine.”