Carlos Sainz suspects a bump at the entry of Yas Marina’s Turn 3 unsettled his Ferrari in Friday’s FP2, making him a hopeless passenger as it veered off course and spun into the barriers.
The Spaniard crashed after just 8 minutes in the session, the incident triggering an inevitable red flag but also a 30-minute halt.
After Sainz’s costly encounter in Las Vegas with a water valve cover, the crash equated to another pricey capital expense for Ferrari that will likely further impact its budget cap.
Contrary to last weekend however, there will be no grid penalty for Sainz. While Ferrari will change several power unit elements on the SF-23, it will rely on previously used, and fresher, components.
Fortunately, this year’s Singapore Grand Prix winner walked away unscathed from the heavy hit.
“I'm feeling good,” said Sainz. “It was a pretty big crash, but in the end, with these safe cars, you can get away with these pretty big hits untouched.
“Obviously [I'm] a little bit sore, but nothing to worry about.
“We definitely changed things from FP1 to FP2 which might have had an effect but obviously, I'm not going to go into details of that.
“Unfortunately, I just couldn't control the car. It just snapped on me and it's those moments where you feel like you're a complete passenger and you wish you maybe could have done something different.”
Sainz speculated that a bump at Turn 3 has become more prominent over the years. In FP1, he was given a warning of its presence.
“For some reason, there's been a change in the track over the years, there's two bumps,” he said.
“One at the exit of Turn 2 and one at the entry of Turn 3, that with this new generation of cars, it's upsetting the car a lot.
“It nearly caught me out in FP1, I had to change a few things in the setup and in the line trying to get rid of it.
“For some reason again, in that lap, it surprised me. It must have been an angle or a way that I took the bump and it just made me a passenger.
“We've seen before with this generation of cars that any of these small bumps can really make you make have a pretty heavy crash.”
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