Sainz reveals reason for Ferrari's "puzzling" day

Carlos Sainz blamed the cool conditions rather than a bungled strategy for Ferrari missing out on another race victory this season.

Sainz started on the front row of the Hungarian Grand Prix grid alongside polesitter George Russell in his Mercedes, with Ferrari team-mate Charles Leclerc third and eventual race winner Max Verstappen an out-of-position 10th.

Sainz eventually ended up fourth, 14.5 seconds behind Verstappen, with Leclerc sixth after a baffling pit stop late in the race.

“We clearly struggled as a team," said Sainz. "Today we were a bit puzzled because we expected a good race pace coming from Friday.

"But it is clear that in these lower temperatures, the track condition changes we had, there was clearly something going on with the car and the tyres.

“We were just not fast, something to analyse and to probably look back, re-group, see what we did wrong for these kinds of conditions and come back after the summer break with a better package.”

Pit stop problems for Sainz

Sainz held second at the start of the race and took the lead when Russell pitted but the Spaniard came out from a slow first stop in third, leaving him in dirty air from the car in front.

Sainz refused to call the team out for a strategy error and said: “The first [stop] cost me the overcut on George, which obviously would have simplified the race because you don’t have dirty air.

“I could have, I think, done an overcut with the last pit stop but it is what it is. We have been decent on pit stops all year but it is true there are, now and then, a couple of pit stops that are failing us.

“We need to analyse what we can do better as we want to be stronger in the second half. I don’t know what we could have done better on strategy but I can tell you that when the pace is bad like it was today, strategy is always difficult.

“If you don’t have pace with any compound you are always going to struggle with strategy because you have very little flexibility.

“Yes, the pit stop cost me today two times but do you include that as a strategy, I don’t know.

"Today we were just slow, and if you compare our pace to Red Bull on Friday to our pace to Red Bull today, there is clearly something in the car and the tyre that we were just not doing right.”

Additional reporting by Ian Parkes

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