F1 News: Carlos Sainz Brings Attention To Dirty Air Issues

Following the Red Bulls up close, the Ferrari driver was within the dirty air zone that posed overtaking challenges.

Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz expressed concerns about the tire advantage of Red Bull, highlighting the challenge of encountering dirty air issues when closely following the RB20 during the Bahrain Grand Prix, which further complicated overtaking maneuvers.

Key Takeaways:

• Carlos Sainz voiced concerns about Red Bull's tire advantage and the challenge of overtaking due to encountering dirty air behind the RB20 during the Bahrain Grand Prix.
• Red Bull's reported superior tire degradation, allowing their soft tires to match hard tire longevity on other cars, may create a significant disadvantage for teams using soft compounds.
• Sainz finished third behind Red Bull's Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez, who chose soft tires in the final stint, while the rest raced on hard tires. Despite knowing the hard compound would surpass the soft in pace due to degradation, Sainz acknowledged the challenge of outpacing Red Bull, citing difficulties in dirty air when chasing Perez.

Red Bull supposedly has an excellent rate of tire degradation since the RB20 can make the soft tire last as long as the hard tire on other cars. The worrying assessment by Sainz could hint at a major disadvantage the other teams possess with soft tires. 

Thus, Sainz secured third place behind Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez. The big factor to point out is that the Red Bull pair were running on soft compound tires in the last leg of the race while the rest of the pack behind them raced with hard tires. 

That was when he received communication via team radio about the imminent scenario where the hard tire would surpass the soft in terms of pace due to tire degradation. Despite this information, Sainz acknowledged the difficulty of finishing ahead of a Red Bull, recognizing their proficiency in maintaining tire pace. He noted that the drop-off on the softs was comparable to that of the entire field on the hards, making it unlikely for him to outpace both RB20s.

Speaking to the media, he said:

“You need to consider that we've been testing here for three days and I've been seeing that Red Bull degradation on Soft [tyres] - it's exactly the same as ours on the Hards.

“As soon as I knew Red Bull had a new Soft for the last stint and Checo had it, it’s not like I went ‘OK, this is my chance’.

“I’ve seen the long runs they did on the C3 tyre in testing and you could see that they basically have the same degradation on the Soft as what everyone had on the Hard. So I wasn't getting too excited.”

Dirty Air Problems 

Despite chasing Perez with a gap of three seconds, Sainz was unable to close the gap due to Red Bull's dirty air. He added:

“I was in a bit of an uncomfortable position because you're in a two, three-second margin where you get all the dirty air but you don't get the advantage of the DRS in the slipstream.

“So you're just sliding a bit more. If I had been within a second or maybe five seconds behind I think on the Hard tyre I could have maybe shown a bit more of the true pace of the car and my pace.

“But in that two, three seconds, it’s the worst place to be and I could never mount any proper challenge on Checo.”

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