The Spaniard was unable to keep up with team-mate Charles Leclerc’s pace on Zandvoort from the first lap and eventually fell back into the chasing group.
But although he bravely tried to keep Fernando Alonso for sixth place, he finally lost to a DRS retreat on the start-finish straight at the beginning of the last lap.
After the race, Sainz said there was no obvious explanation for why he was so slow and said that only an investigation at the Ferrari factory this week would get to the bottom of the matter.
“Of course I can’t explain it,” he said.
“The whole race was a bit annoying for me and I was very slow: slipped around and the tires were broken.
“I lost the feeling that I had with the car on Friday on Saturday. And to be honest, I noticed something on the laps before the start that I wasn’t really happy with, and the balance was pretty wrong.
“I basically struggled quite a bit all day, and we’ll look into it over the next few days to find out what exactly happened.”
Marshals remove Carlos Sainz Jr.’s damaged car, Ferrari SF21
Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images
The weekend at Sainz did not go optimally after he crashed badly and damaged his car in the last free practice session on Saturday morning.
Ferrari managed to fix it completely, but the team says it can’t rule out something being a legacy of that incident.
Team principal Mattia Binotto said: “We don’t yet know what was really going on, so let’s take a look at everything.
“We’re going to look at the car in terms of assembly. We’re going to look at the setup, we’re going to look at the vehicle balance. At the moment we have no answer.
“I don’t think the accident will have any consequences, even though Carlos didn’t have useful time on the track that morning to try to understand the car a little better.
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“I think we can’t rule out a mistake at the moment, so we’ll look at all aspects carefully.
“I am sure that we will draw a conclusion that will make it more comfortable for the next events.”
Sainz added, “It can either be one thing or it can be many little things. I prefer not to jump to conclusions, especially since I don’t know for sure.
“We just didn’t look at the data, so it will take a few days.
“I’m sure we will find something and we will come back stronger. It could just be that it was nothing and I need to change a few things. But it is true that it was very strange and we will work hard to understand. “
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