Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz believes that he would have won the Monaco Grand Prix had it not been for a disrupted out-lap.
After a delayed, rain-affected start to the race, Sainz took his extreme Wets all the way to the transition to Slicks, and ended up in front of team-mate Charles Leclerc a result after the Monegasque pitted for Inters.
However, he was unable to get ahead of Sergio Perez when he made his stop, and the Mexican held on through a red flag period after a crash for Mick Schumacher to take his third win in Formula 1.
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Had it not been for a lapped car on the lap after his stop though, the Spaniard believes he would have been ahead.
“I felt like we did everything that we had to do out there,” explained Sainz.
“We stayed patient on the Wets, we took the right decision to go on the Slicks, and a lapped car… on the out lap [I was] stuck behind a lapped car and it cost me the race win today.
“You can understand the frustration because a clean out lap would have secured me the race win today but it’s what this sport is sometimes.”
On his decision to go straight from Wets to Hards, Sainz reiterates that it would have paid off had it not been for the disruption out of the pits.
“I knew it from halfway through the race, I started to see the dry line,” he added.
“I started to realise that it was going to go straight into slicks, I think we did the right call as we were leading the race basically.
“Then we pitted for that hard tyre, obviously hard is never easy on the out lap but I had to do 12 corners, something like that, behind a lapped car.
“That cost me at least a couple of seconds, it cost me a race win.
“I’m not going to complain too much, I know that this sport is like that.
“Checo was unlucky in Jeddah, today he did a great race, plus he got a bit lucky with myself and in this sport it will turn around one day or later.”
The 27-year-old was asked if he could have sent a move into the Nouvelle chicane on Perez having threatened it a few times, but he had a little too much degradation on hits tyres to send it.
“I mean you can see I have quite a lot of graining myself too, especially at the rear,” added the Spaniard, pointing to his Ferrari.
“Which made the entry to the tunnel quite difficult to get close and to pass, a couple of times I was really, really, really close to launching a move through there but it was still a bit wet on the inside.
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“Checo was braking quite late so I think if I would have braked any later I would have taken him out with me.”
Sainz’s podium in Monaco is his fourth of the season, and it puts him within one point of George Russell for fourth in the Drivers’ Championship.