Sainz qualified on Saturday as the leading midfielder in fifth and was able to maintain his position on the soft compound tires until the start of the race.
But after being undercut in the pits by teammate Charles Leclerc and McLaren’s Daniel Ricciardo, Sainz began to fall behind as he struggled with his tires, losing positions to Lando Norris, Pierre Gasly, Fernando Alonso, Sebastian Vettel and Lance Stroll in the second stint.
Ultimately, Sainz stayed 11th at the checkered flag, while Leclerc was one lap behind the leaders in 16th place after switching to a two-stop strategy due to a similar problem.
“It is very clear, very obvious that we must have done something wrong today in order to lose our pace that far,” said Sainz after the race.
“It’s a limitation that has come up in some races where we’ve really struggled with grit and degradation on the front tires, twice as much as our competitors.
“Cars that we were half a second faster yesterday, like the McLarens, or three-tenths faster. I don’t remember – today, towards the end of the race, they were two seconds faster per lap.
“So it is clear that we have a limitation with the tires, with the way we drive the tires. We have to analyze that, something that we have to try to get better through the season.”
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Sainz said he felt “something was not quite right” at the start of the race and didn’t think the team could have done much differently with the strategy to fix the problem.
“The problem is, when you have as much degradation as you have today, you have no strategic leeway,” said Sainz.
“You don’t have a lead in defending, nor is it that we’re the fastest on the straights.
“But today we were really, really far off the pace. We simply degraded the tires twice as much as the others.
“It’s just something we need to understand. Because I think at the moment this one definitely surprised us.”
Leclerc stopped three laps earlier than Sainz and was able to pick up the undercut initially, only to fight in a similar fashion and slip the order down.
“It was one of the most difficult races of my time in Formula 1,” said Leclerc.
“I just fought a lot. I think both cars had a lot of struggles. We had five or six laps on the tires, which we were pretty good at, and we were competitive, even though we tried to be careful of the tires , they were so degradable.
“On my side we tried a second stop towards the end. We knew we would be without points anyway, so we just made another stop.
“But then of course it was pretty tricky because we were racing with blue flags and all that. It was just a very bad race for us. So we have to understand.”
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