Carlos Sainz Jnr, McLaren, Shanghai International Circuit, 2019

Sainz race pace showed McLaren potential in China – Norris

RaceFans Round-up

Posted on

| Written by

In the round-up: Lando Norris says he is encouraged by the pace team mate Carlos Sainz Jnr demonstrated in China after the pair were hit by Daniil Kvyat at the start.

What they say

There was good potential. If you look at the race pace from Carlos after the lap one incident there was potential to do much better as a team but the contact between Kvyat, Carlos and myself ruined all of it.

We’ve just got to move on, look at the positives which was the car had good race pace.

Quotes: Dieter Rencken

Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free

Social media

Notable posts from Twitter, Instagram and more:

Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free

Comment of the day

The onboard video of the Hanoi street circuit revealed yesterday prompted a mixed reaction. @Glynh likes it:

Looks very good to me, bit like Mexico and Baku. Other than one place it’s refreshing to see the lack of 90 degree corners and fast bends instead.

Possibly too narrow for overtaking if I’m going to be negative and the blind corners could cause some unlucky crashes but that’s balanced out by the challenge and zero run off gets the thumbs up from me.
@Glynh

Happy birthday!

Happy birthday to Jiten, Lenny, The Comedian 39, The_Pope and Tommo N7!

If you want a birthday shout-out tell us when yours is via the contact form or adding to the list here.

Author information

Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

Got a potential story, tip or enquiry? Find out more about RaceFans and contact us here.

20 comments on “Sainz race pace showed McLaren potential in China – Norris”

  1. Beautiful simplicity to the front wing on that Indy Car.

    1. Every time I see a Indy car, I wonder what do we gain with the convoluted aero devices in F1.

      1. Every time I see an Indy car I have to suppress the urge to vomit. Jesus they are ugly sonofabitches.

        1. You have no taste in motorsport!

      2. F1 gains about 10 to 20 seconds of lap time.

        1. F1 would really benefit from being 10 seconds slower if it allowed for much closer, more exciting and cheaper racing!

          1. Entirely agree.

    2. That indycar is in oval spec. The front wing on the ‘regular’ indycars is more complex but admittedly still nowhere near F1 levels and still quite attractive looking.

      We should be looking at something roughly similar for 2021 with the oversized endplates acting as a form of tyre cover although the ‘India’ concept did not feature this.

  2. re COTD on the Hanoi circuit, having just watched it, I’d say the first 75% rubbish, really bad (straight line squirt, right angle corner, and repeat), the final 25% actually quite unique, maybe brilliant, possibly a bit mad – rising, lots of fast corners, narrowish and bits that look unsighted. Had those percentages been the other way round, it’d be great. As it is, no, just another dull street circuit, albeit with a standout section. Fair enough if it replaces one of the other bunch of personality-free tracks.

    1. @david-br I agree, the last sector looks quite hair-raising—quick esses with no runoff. I hope that with a general admission ticket you’ll be able to get close up to the other side of the walls. It could be a chance to see F1 cars on the limit, but far closer than you’d ever be able to get at the actual Suzuka esses, or somewhere like Maggots-Becketts or COTA’s esses.

      Also on the positive side, the sightlines from the grandstands look quite good. It looks like you’ll be able to see quite a bit more of the track than at any other street course I can recall.

      I too find the first half of the lap less inspiring, but I also see the logic in it. The first two complexes are mirror images of each other—hard braking zone into a 90º corner, followed by a multi-apex sweeping corner, and if you get it a little bit wrong, that tight little kink on the exit will magnify your mistake and hold up your momentum even more. If the driver behind you nails it, they should really be able to get a run down the following straight. Of course, let’s see if it actually works…

      1. The last sector looks like f1 cars will have to follow a minimum 1 second behind each other. And will make it hard to get into Drs.

  3. Head of worlds largest pedophile ring receives bust of Ayrton Senna. Strange world we live in.

    1. And billionaires giving millions to rebuild the symbolism of its burning in france

    2. Ha, looks like I am not the only one thinking this.

  4. I just saw the onboards of the 2 mclarens and kvyat, in a youtube video… No way did kvyat do anything wrong, the 2nd mclaren lost control out towards the curb and hit kvyat, what a ridiculous penalty he got.

    1. Look at the onboard of Stroll – I think it’s not black and white. No way Kvyat could handle this turn gracefully. He threw it all into the corner and lost the rear into Sainz. Norris shouldn’t have rejoined like that though he never left much and didn’t rejoin much either. Kvyat’s move was optimistic imo.

      1. @spoutnik, I would say that all three drivers could have handled the situation better, but it is still a racing incident that was overpenalised.

        Kvyat did have that brief bit of oversteer that put him closer to Sainz, though the natural line through that corner does mean that drivers normally drift out to the left anyway, Norris chose to come back onto the track at high speed and at an angle that was cutting across the normal racing line (to be honest, the way he came back on makes me wonder if he would have run over Sainz’s front wing anyway), and Sainz arguably chose to keep his foot on the throttle and drove into a gap that he could see was shrinking (he does, at the last second, try to bail out of it, but just ended up locking his brakes and partially lost control himself).

  5. Norris is right … if you take off the time they lost changing wings & getting back, Sainz would have beenda ahead of Ricciardo, & Norris behind him … even though they were clearly trying a few things with his 4 pitstops.

  6. I couldn’t agree more with Berger. Like if he read my mind.

    1. It seems to me Ferrari believe it is far more important that their Number One driver finishes in front of their Number Two driver than it is for them to be beating Max Verstappen, who is now ahead of both their drivers on the WDC points board.
      Thinking about this, Ferrari seriously blundered in their strategy at China. They should have at least walked away from China with a minimum of a 3rd and a 4th place, but no, they gave 4th place away. It isn’t enough that they let Verstappen finish 4th, worse is they don’t seem to be worried that they lost 2 WCC points in the process. Looking at the pace of the Honda powered Red Bull, Ferrari should be suspecting Red Bull might be just behind them at the end of this season, and those 2 points could be important. If the race had finished as say Vettel 3rd, Leclerc 4th and Verstappen 5th, then Vettel would be tied with Verstappen on the WDC board and Leclerc one point ahead of them (LEC = 38, VET & VER = 37). In this scenario Ferrari would have 75 WCC points and Red Bull 50 points. Instead Ferrari left China with 73 points and Red Bull with 52, 2 more points than Ferrari should have let them get.
      I don’t think Leclerc or Vettel could have got the fastest lap point if they were to finish 3rd and 4th (not necessarily respectively), but if one of them had then the points would be Ferrari 76 and Red Bull Racing 49.

Comments are closed.