Carlos Sainz Jnr, McLaren, Monaco, 2019

Kvyat was “one car length away” from beating Sainz

2019 Monaco Grand Prix

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Daniil Kvyat says he will take a close look at his race strategy in the Monaco Grand Prix to see if there was any way he could have finished ahead of Carlos Sainz Jnr.

The McLaren driver got ahead of Kvyat at the start of the race. Toro Rosso left Kvyat out for two laps after Sainz pitted, giving Kvyat the chance to stay ahead, but he narrowly fell short as he left the pits.

“It was very close, I mean one car length,” said Kvyat, “Just one car length would have got us ahead.

“I will analyse later how it was. I think my first lap was mega, the second lap already the tyres were giving up. So maybe if we pitted just after one lap we could have stayed ahead, I’m not sure, we will analyse, I don’t know. I think it was a fantastic call anyway and we did our best.

Sainz set the fastest lap of the race once his tyres were up to temperature, and Kvyat suspects he should have pitted a lap sooner,

“He tried to push super-hard, that’s why I’m asking myself maybe he needed one lap to warm up the tyres, then after that his second lap was too good already for me. I had a tyre with 35 laps on.”

However Kvyat praised the team’s decision not to pit him earlier during the Safety Car period, which he said made his race. “It was a very good call because my tyres were in a good state and there was no point in changing them.”

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Gabriele Koslowski
Gabriele Koslowski first began following Formula 1 during the early noughties, and is a director of a Belgian motorsport media company. During the past...
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...

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4 comments on “Kvyat was “one car length away” from beating Sainz”

  1. And Verstappen was one car length behind Hamilton. Don’t see why he has to analyse it so much.. he got overtaken on a track where track position is king.

    1. It reads as if he’s thinking that a tad better strategy would have given him said track position though, isn’t he @todfod? I mean, that’s why Red Bull took the risk with the unsafe release, and presumably why Verstappen pushed Bottas into the wall: to gain track position.

      1. Williams did a pit stop of 2.07 seconds. If Kvyat’s pitstop was at least 2.4 instead of 2.7, he would’ve emerged from the pits ahead of Sainz.

      2. Interesting.. if VER just drove on, knowing BOT was behind him/at his side he would have had the advantage.
        He was driving in fornt of BOT and should have go first.
        But not knowing BOT was beside him resulted in a touching.

        About Kvyat, he obviously means he would have had one cars lenght extra when leaving the pits that woukd have resulted in passing Sainz. Not passing him on track.

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