03/08/2020
NEWS STORY
Venting his frustration at Romain Grosjean's tactics as he battled the Frenchman for fifth, Carlos Sainz had no idea of the cruel hand fate was yet to deal him.
"Oh my God," exclaimed the Spaniard on a number of occasions as the Haas driver clearly appeared to move whilst under braking.
Eventually shown the black and white flag for unsportsmanlike behaviour, the Frenchman was subsequently hauled before the stewards for his equally robust tactics while attempting to hold off Daniel Ricciardo.
However, handed an official warning, for Grosjean, a director of the Grand Prix Drivers' Association, it was a case of 'je ne regrette rien'.
"I think in both cases I moved a little bit late," he admitted, "but I always left a car width, so they want to clarify the fact that we cannot move that late, which I agree with. But there were no real rules beforehand and Max Verstappen used it a lot during his racing so I thought why can I not take advantage of that.
"It's not every day we're running sixth or seventh in a race," he continued, "and I had to give everything I could to defend.
"Looking at them, I got a bit caught out by the delta speed in my mirrors," he admitted, "both of my mirrors twisted down at the beginning of the race so I couldn't really see much in them.
"I agree that I moved a little bit late, but I also always left more than a car width," he insisted. "I spoke with Daniel and he was like 'Yes, it's a bit marginal, not too bad'. Sainz was complaining a lot on the radio from what I heard, but he could pass, there was a car width and I've got to do my race.
"If there's a clarification and we can't move that late then I'll take that into account, but to that point I used the limit, I was trying to defend as hard as I could.
"A few years ago we really wanted to put a rule in place that you can't move under braking, following some of Max's defending, but there weren't any rules put in action. Therefore I pushed the limit a bit, got a warning, but I don't regret anything. I tried to do the best I can.
"We tried a different strategy, I gave 100% from the beginning to the end. I'm proud of my race and if there's a clarification and we need to move early and then I will of course do so accordingly.
"You can argue that I wasn't driving dangerously because I was always leaving a car's width, so there was always room for the other car to go next to me. I think a bit of a clarification on that would be nice, but also we don't want to push 'let them race' away from Formula 1 because we want to have fights and be pushing hard."
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