F1 News
Sainz: "Probably one of the easiest P6’s of my career"
- Bevan Youl
Carlos Sainz has said that his P6 finish in France was ‘one of the easiest’ in his career after maintaining the race smoothly.
Sainz was outpaced by his McLaren teammate Lando Norris in qualifying but managed to overtake him early on and didn’t see a challenge afterwards.
Only losing a place to Sebastian Vettel in the end, Sainz praised the pace he had in his McLaren.
Sainz said (quoted by F1i.com): "It was probably one of the easiest P6's of my career.
"I'm very happy with that. I had good pace, managing the tyres a lot and when the team asked me to pick up the pace, I could do that and control the race.
"It was one of those days where you are comfortable in the car and everything goes smoothly. The car balance was good, we were the fourth fastest car this weekend.
"At the end it was boring, but for me, that was good news. And because of that, finishing best of the rest is a lot easier."
Sainz also played down the question that McLaren had brought along a secret upgrade to the Circuit Paul Ricard, saying it has only been small things throughout the year.
"If the question is, has there been any big upgrade for this race? It is no," Sainz added.
"There have been little things coming for the whole year and we don't know how much is the magnitude of each, because when you introduce a lot of small stuff you don't really know when suddenly a big thing is coming.
"We still have some work to do in slow speed , but in high speed we are happy with the car and there is quite a lot of high speed here."
"I think Renault has done a good step on the engine. I insist, on these kinds of tracks, the step on the engine is helping a lot, and we are enjoying it when it comes to qualifying."