Carlos Sainz revealed how an “awkward” scene with Sergio Perez concluded in them ruing a lost Azerbaijan GP podium.
Ferrari driver Sainz and Red Bull’s Perez collided coming out of Turn 2 in the closing stages of the race, Sainz passing Perez who was in combat with Charles Leclerc and then getting a run on Perez, resulting in the contact as both Sainz and Perez were sent into the wall at speed.
Carlos Sainz spent ‘awkward’ 20 minutes with Sergio Perez
Both drivers were thankfully unhurt, but headed to the medical centre for checks after the incident, where the pair set about trying to work out what had happened.
The general consensus they reached was disbelief that neither of them was part of the Baku podium celebrations.
“We were awkwardly sat next to each other for 20 minutes in the medical centre, both with a heart rate monitor and controlling our vitals,” Sainz revealed.
“We were looking at each other and saying: ‘Mate, what the f*** happened there?’ And we were like: ‘I don’t know. But I promise I didn’t do anything bad to you, Checo. I didn’t close you off. I didn’t do anything’.
“We were having this dialogue and trying to analyse what happened. And suddenly, after these 20 minutes, we were like: ‘This sport is so shit sometimes. How can we be here and missing out on the podium? We had the podium’.
“Charles was dying on his hard tyres out there. We were probably both going to have a go at him. And we were both sitting there like: ‘How on earth did we manage to not finish in the podium?’”
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The exchange ended on a positive and humorous note between the two drivers.
“It was a podium coming – and in the end we kind of joked about it, so no hard feelings with each other,” said Sainz.
As for Perez’s take, he looked at the incident as a case of “just wrong moves at the wrong time”, concurring with Sainz that it was a highly underwhelming way for their respective races to end.
“Once we took our helmets off, we realised that we both screwed it up,” Perez added, “that finishing a race like that was really disappointing.”
Perez remains the most successful driver at the Baku City Circuit as the only multi-time winner of the Azerbaijan GP, as focus now turns to Singapore this weekend.
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