You guys need to consider that we’ve been testing here three days and I’ve been seeing that Red Bull degradation on soft, and it’s exactly the same as ours on the hard,” Sainz stated to media including PlanetF1.com after the race.
“So as soon as I knew Red Bull had a new soft for the last stint and Checo had it, it’s not like I went ‘okay, this is my chance’.
“I’ve seen the long runs they did on the C3 tyre in testing and you could see that they basically have the same deg on the soft as what everyone has on the hard, so I wasn’t getting too excited.
“Also, I was in a bit of an uncomfortable position because you’re there in the two, three second margin, which is where you get all the dirty air, but you don’t get the advantage of the DRS and the slipstream, so you’re just sliding a bit more.
Having seen how Red Bull have stacked up around Bahrain throughout pre-season testing and into the race weekend, Sainz knew that despite having a potential tyre advantage trying to catch Perez late on, it was entirely possible that the Red Bull driver would be able to make his tyres last the 20 laps required while most other teams could not.
