Sainz thrilled with another points finish after disastrous qualifying

Craig Boon/Octane Photographic Ltd.

Austrian Grand Prix – Carlos Sainz may have suffered an engine failure in Saturday’s qualifying session, but recovered well on Sunday to bring home more points for Toro Rosso. The Spanish racer had just re-emerged onto the Red Bull Ring in the closing stages of Q1 after the red flag period to cover the crash of teammate Daniil Kvyat, when the Ferrari engine in the back of his STR11 failed. Pulling to the side of the track, he was forced to watch on from the sidelines and doomed to another lowly grid position.

Starting the race from P15, he made good use of the inherent pace of his car to work his way up into the points, and eventually came home a strong P8. He was understandably happy with his result, and said: “I’m very pleased with my race, especially because we didn’t have an easy one! We started from the back and did a good start, managing to get into the top 10 in the early stages of the race. Suddenly, after the second pit-stop during the Safety Car period, we were nearly last… Which meant we had to do a very good last stint on the Soft tyres – 35 laps – overtaking lots of cars and managing to get back into the top eight, something a bit unexpected after seeing myself back in P15 with half the race to go.”

Team boss Franz Tost praised his driver, saying “After our problems in qualifying, Carlos’ P8 is a big success for us today. Having to prepare the car with another engine is always a risk, as you don’t have the chance to run it before the race, but fortunately the team did a fantastic job to get the car ready in such a good way. Carlos drove a great race, with a lot of overtaking manoeuvres as well as being able to manage the tyres very well.”

Sainz has been hit with penalties for mechanical troubles at the last two Grands Prix, compromising his starting positions, and the Spanish driver says that Saturdays need to go better in order to capitalise on the pace of the Toro Rosso: “After a tough Saturday, I’m happy to finish the weekend with a good result as we’ve worked very hard for this – now we just need to make sure we have better Saturdays in order to start races further up the grid and fight for more points. I’m confident we can do it and I look forward to next week’s race weekend in Silverstone – my favourite track together with Spa – where we will keep pushing!”

CREDIT TO:http://formulaspy.com/formula-1/formula-1-news/sainz-thrilled-austrian-result-27604