Luck really isn’t on the side of Carlos Sainz, as proved once again at the United States Grand Prix on Sunday, as the Spaniard failed to even get past the first corner without being caught up in an incident.
Heading into the race, Sainz was tipped as a real contender for his second victory of the season, after claiming an empathic pole position at the Circuit of the Americas.
The Spaniard actually didn’t make a great start off the line and appeared to suffer from wheelspin during the opening couple of phases of his launch, allowing Max Verstappen up the inside.
Sainz went wide at Turn One before trying to cut back under Verstappen; however, the Ferrari driver went across a somewhat helpless George Russell.
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The collision spun the pole sitter around, demoting him to the back of the pack.
To further add to his immediate woes, Sainz pulled into the pits at the end of the opening lap to retire from his sixth race of the season.
Whilst it probably didn’t come as much of a consolidation, Russell was awarded a five-second time penalty for hitting the 28-year-old.
Sainz seemingly blamed Russell for making a “driver mistake”, with the Spaniard admitting that it “follows a bit of a trend” for 2022.
“I think driver mistakes are driver mistakes, and the problem is that I paid a price again and it follows a bit the trend of the whole year with Lap 1, that it doesn’t allow me to do the race and doesn’t allow me to fight for the win, or doesn’t allow me to keep learning from the car, which is extremely frustrating and disappointing,” Sainz told the official Formula 1 website.
2022 was supposed to be the year where Sainz built on his 2021 success, of beating Charles Leclerc in the Drivers’ Championship; however, the complete opposite has happened.
The Spaniard has suffered from reliability-based retirements, retirements based on his own mistakes, and retirements based on the mistakes of others.
His retirement at COTA was staggeringly his sixth of the year, with Sainz having now retired in Australia, Imola, Azerbaijan, Austria, Japan, and the United States.
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In the championship, it means Lewis Hamilton is just four points behind Sainz to claim a spot in the top five of the Drivers’ Championship, something which is vital given the embarrassment whoever finishes sixth faces.
Sainz added after the race that 2022 has simply been a “very poor year”, with luck certainly not having been on his side this campaign.
“There’s been so many races where I don’t even complete one lap, so that is also difficult to make a step forward on race days, which shows how frustrated I am and how my year has been because the speed is there, but it’s been just a very poor year in terms of luck and things happening,” added the Spaniard following his retirement.