Carlos Sainz Jnr, Renault, Albert Park, 2018

Sainz “nearly vomited” because he couldn’t stop drinking

2018 F1 season

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Carlos Sainz Jnr said he nearly vomited during the Australian Grand Prix because he had drunk too much water.

The Renault driver revealed a faulty drinks tube meant he was “drinking and drinking and drinking” from an early stage in the race.

Lewis Hamilton, Kimi Raikkonen, Albert Park, 2018
2018 Australian Grand Prix in pictures
“I struggled a lot because from lap one I had a drink tube pumping water into my mouth,” said Sainz. “And I had to drink it until I noticed I was just getting full of water in my stomach.”

“I got a bit of a digestion problem because the amount of water that I had in my stomach going from side to side in the corners with the G-force and I was just not feeling good because of that.”

During the race Sainz told his team he was “struggling with my stomach – I’ve got a lot of nausea from the water.” Sainz eventually managed to remove the tube from his mouth which sprayed more water onto him, adding to his distraction.

“At some point I just tried to make it to the finished because I was nearly vomiting under the Safety Car,” he said.

He eventually finished the race in 10th place. “When you have good pace the whole weekend and suddenly this problem happens in the race it’s a bit unfortunate,” Sainz added. “I think there’s no fault for anyone, just an unfortunate situation, we’ll learn from it.”

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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...

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25 comments on “Sainz “nearly vomited” because he couldn’t stop drinking”

  1. I was wondering what Sainz meant about radio call towards the ends of race. It must have been nasty feeling for him.

    1. Sky pundits weren’t getting a good feed on the radio, it was clear for the viewers though. S
      ainz jr borrowing some excuses from his father’s excuse book. He never ever got beaten by a team mate… except for 1.5 years of Max and now the end of last season by Hulk and today, in other words most of his career. It’s like this that the Sainzs leave a better impression than that of their results.
      I remember his father getting either lucky or beaten by Colin McRae and others but Sainz is a great champion…

  2. The title of this article – well, it’s happened to all of us, hasn’t it?

    1. Damn, you beat me to it :-)

      Don’t drink and drive“.

      1. @phylyp Ironic since Johnnie Walker still sponsoring them, right?

  3. Hydration is a lifestyle!

  4. Well done to finish the race. He showed great pace this weekend. What a weird situation though, maybe if he vomited, like Mark Webber years back, maybe he’d have felt better and finished higher!

    1. Dude but vomiting in your helmet? Don’t think that would have helped matters much

  5. Wow that sounds really horrible… Did pretty well to hold of Perez then. Would rather have no water for the race than have this

    1. Thats doubtful.

      1. @rethla
        Verstappen did just that last year to shave off some weight of an otherwise overweight car, and finished 5th without any major problems. He complained afterwards that the absence of a drinking bottle made his job harder, but apparently, it worked.

        1. Hulkenberg went without a bottle for this race, allegedly to save weight. However, he had problems with the drinks pump during free practice, so you’ve got to wonder if there’s more to it.

          1. @kartguy07
            Will Renault finally fix their waterbottle reliability problems? Stay tuned!

          2. @nase
            Don’t, that’ll be just the start. Next it’ll be “Is Lewis’ ex secretly seeing arch-rival Sebastian? What was newly-wed Mrs Bottas doing around the back of the Ferrari motorhome? Tune in next time to find out*”

            * Knowledge or interest of cars optional.

  6. They should have told him jokes until it sprayed out of his nose

  7. Being waterboarded while racing an F1 car, man that’s rough.

  8. Sounds like a poor excuse to me.

    1. Armchairing taken to absurd heights.

  9. Doesnt beat webbers vomiting race hhah

  10. Really? They used to torture people with water this way a few hundred years ago. It’s called waterboarding and it can even be lethal. You get my personal “most ignorant COTD” award. Congrats!

    1. Meant for Sammy above

    2. Waterboarding? Really? A bit of over exaggeration mate!
      Sainz said the pump kept feeding him water until he eventually removed it. Why didn’t he remove it sooner?
      Don’t jump to conclusions before you check all the facts lest you be painted as ignorant:)

      1. Why didn’t he remove it sooner?

        Total 100% guessing here: maybe the pump is pre-programmed to supply some slow flow of fluid to the drivers so they stay hydrated. Something like 50 ml per lap (drivers lose up to 3 liters of sweat during the race).

        If the pump malfunctions (overfunctions), and gives you double the amount, you would not notice immediately (it is still a very small amount) and drink on. Only after 20 laps it turns out you have drunk 2 liters of water instead of the intended 1.

  11. Sammy do you think if it would be pouring out like a flood he would not throw it out immediately? But ultimately it doesn’t matter if some overflow of water that seems non-threatening slowly floods your stomach and then it’s too late because you have water poisoning. It’s also a very rare occurrence to have a water bottle malfunction this way. Normally the problem is it wouldn’t give you any water. So apparently it’s not something CS dealt with before.

    But yeah saying someone has a “poor excuse” without being in their place and knowing all the facts is really ignorant, not to say arrogant. And that’s a fact. You still have the award to yourself :)

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