Sainz was telling marshal to wave yellow flag when Leclerc hit drain cover

Carlos Sainz Jnr was alerting marshals to the danger of debris on track when his team mate hit a loose drain cover during today’s test.

This morning test session at the Bahrain International Circuit was abandoned after Charles Leclerc damaged his Ferrari’s floor on the debris, which was also hit by Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes.

Sainz, who had a similar experience when his car struck a broken water valve cover in Las Vegas last year, saw today’s scene unfold first-hand. “I was actually standing right in front of the drain cover when it came out, because I went on track to see,” he told the official Formula 1 channel.

He realised the marshals had not noticed the drain cover had worked loose on the kerb approaching turn 11 and was in the process of warning them when Leclerc’s car arrived.

“I was looking at it [thinking] ‘yellow flag it, yellow flag it, yellow flag it, someone’s going to take it!’ Boom, my team mate came and took it.

“So, I felt like it could have been avoided in a way. I missed it by one lap because I went to speak to a marshal and just when I was speaking to him, ‘yellow flag it…’ So I feel a bit to blame.”

Ferrari fitted a spare floor to Leclerc’s car while the damage to the track was repaired. Sainz was due to replace him during the afternoon session, but Leclerc remained in the car for the first hour when running resumed ahead of schedule following the early lunch break prompted by the disruption. Sainz has since taken over the car and will complete the final four hours of running.

Last year Ferrari complained about how marshals reacted to the loose water valve cover Sainz struck during practice for the Las Vegas Grand Prix. Team principal Frederic Vasseur said they were too slow to red-flag the session after spotting the damage to the track surface.

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