Sainz backs Nasr after ‘rookie mistake’

Carlos Sainz says Felipe Nasr’s crash while warming up the tyres on Saturday at the Canadian Grand Prix is the kind of mistake rookies need to be allowed to make.

Nasr was trying to warm up his tyres on the straight approaching the final chicane at Montreal when he accidentally hit the DRS button, losing control of his Sauber and crashing heavily in to the wall. Having seen his fellow rookie’s incident, Sainz says teams need to be patient while new drivers learn from their errors.

“I think it’s a rookie mistake and you guys have to allow rookies to do this,” Sainz said. “OK, it’s a bad one but it’s mistakes that I did in Monaco, he’s done it here, it’s rookie mistakes that have to happen for you to learn.

“I think particularly this year with the tyres of Monaco and the tyres here it’s very difficult to warm them up and you really have to put a lot of stress through them, a lot of weaving that actually sometimes can be dangerous. It’s the situation at the moment and I understand his situation because he’s a rookie, the same as me and Max [Verstappen] and you do these kind of mistakes sometimes.”

And Sainz admits he has been struggling to get to grips with the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve himself this weekend and expects a difficult race today.

“Very tricky, I expect the toughest race of the season because obviously we have a power deficit which makes it very difficult to overtake and very easy to be overtaken. Also, the lack of downforce that we are running on the car is not ideal for tyre degradation. Everything says points will be more difficult than ever but we are going to fight for it, we’re going to try to do something clever and something difference and see what we can do.

“I find [the track] very challenging. You can see every single driver never puts a perfect lap together here because it’s so difficult to get all the braking and all the kerbs right. All the traction zones are slippery, all the braking zones are slippery. So for a rookie I’m actually finding it more complicated than Monaco, this track, because it’s really challenging.”

Click here for Saturday's gallery from the Canadian Grand Prix

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