Carlos Sainz insisted that he was "quite happy, quite proud" of finishing on the podium today in the Austrian Grand Prix at the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg.
It hadn't been the smoothest of weekends for the team, but Sainz started and finished the Sprint race in fifth place, and started Sunday's race from the second row alongside George Russell.
Sainz tangled with Lewis Hamilton in the opening laps and was initially passed by the Mercedes, but Hamilton went off track in the process and had to give the place back.
While Hamilton was never able to get past Sainz again, McLaren's Oscar Piastri pulled it off just before a late Virtual Safety Car following the Max Verstappen/Lando Norris clash on lap 64.
That meant Sainz was third when the race resumed, and that's where he finished to join Russell and Piastri on the podium and deny Hamilton a second consecutive third place.
"Quite an eventful race up front," he told the media in parc ferme after the finish. "Happy days for Formula 1 that there's a bit of action up front, and we're getting to see some nice battles.
"We knew the Mercedes today might have a bit of an advantage on race pace, but we tried everything to keep up," he said. "It just looked like they had this half a tenth to a tenth of pace advantage.
"We set our targets in trying to beat the Mercedes and we managed to beat one, even if one of them got ahead," he continued. "I was behind the two of them, passed Lewis, and then it was all about trying to keep up with George.
"I thought that was a battle for a podium, which he was going to win, and in the end it became a battle for a win," he noted. "Then Oscar at the end was coming really, really quickly.
"Red Bull and McLaren were in a league of their own this weekend, then there was a step to George and me battling for that P3, P4," he said. "We tried everything we could but we know we've been struggling the last few races.
"In the end P3 is a good result I think," he decided, calling it a "bonus" for the team. "We can be quite happy, quite proud of that because this weekend hasn't been easy for us. To come away with 15 points and a P3 is a good result.
"I think we would have been probably P5 on the road, which is where we were expecting to finish, as Oscar sooner or later was always going to pass us in the McLaren.
"Unfortunately for us, we are still coming off the back of a tough couple of races where we are not quite there to fight for the win yet," he said. "That was not the situation at the beginning of the year.
"It shows that we need to work hard. We need to understand what's happened the last couple of races. And once we understand it, hopefully in time for Silverstone, we can make a step and improve our performance."
Sainz said that the aim for upcoming races was "to make sure next time we are up there to capitalise. And if not, podiums like these are always good news, and we will keep pushing flat out to stay in the fight."
It has been a turbulent weekend for his team mate Charles Leclerc, who struggled to P7 in yesterdays Sprint after failing to set a time in the final round of Sprint Qualifying, and then made a mistake at the end of main qualifying.
That left him starting today's race from sixth place on the grid,which saw him involved in a first lap altercation with McLaren's Oscar Piastri that also ended up drawing in Sergio Perez.
Leclerc and Perez were left with damage to the Ferrari's front wing and the Red Bull's sidepod. Leclerc was forced to pit, but additional damage to the underside of the car meant he was unable to battle his way back into the points.
"The collision on the opening lap obviously completely ruined my race," he said after the finish which saw him out of the top ten. "We were hoping for a safety car but it didn’t come.
“My view is that it was a racing incident, I couldn’t do anything," he stated. “I was in the middle of Oscar and Checo, Oscar didn’t know Checo was on the inside, Checo went for an overtake because there was the gap.
"But maybe was a bit too optimistic," he suggested. "Going into the first corner three-wide, it’s never going to work out, and that made me lose the front wing.
“That was not the end of our race, but then we had to recover so much," he continued. I did the whole stint behind Lando, I couldn’t overtake because of the blue flags and I just had to stay behind, but we had more pace.
"That compromised also our fight for at least one or two points," he said. "The end result was that we couldn’t even score a point. A big shame.
"The only positive aspect is that we were able to try various set-up configurations, producing plenty of data for the team, which will be very important for the upcoming races.
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