Carlos Sainz said that the Red Bull RB20’s degradation on soft tires was comparable to that of most other teams on hard tires, which made it improbable for him to succeed in his last-ditch effort to catch Sergio Perez for second place.
Although Sainz looked to be on course to challenge Perez in the final stint—hard tires seemed preferable to the new softs Perez had—he explained that Red Bull’s tyre kindness made it a viable option for them. Sainz had put in a Driver of the Day performance in Bahrain, as determined by Formula 1 fans.
After the race, Sainz told the media, notably PlanetF1.com, “You guys need to take into consideration that we’ve been testing here for three days, and I’ve been seeing that Red Bull degradation on soft, and it’s exactly the same as ours on the hard.”
It’s not like I thought, ‘Okay, this is my chance,’ when I learned Red Bull had a new soft for the last stint and Checo had it.
“I wasn’t getting too enthusiastic because I’ve watched the long runs they performed on the C3 tire during testing, and you could see that they basically have the same deg on the soft as what everyone has on the hard.
Additionally, I felt a little awkward because you were there in
