Carlos Sainz reveals pre-race issue that led to Australian GP retirement

Carlos Sainz has revealed how a late steering wheel change before the Australian Grand Prix sparked a chain of events that eventually led to him putting his Ferrari in the gravel trap.

The Spaniard had a weekend to forget in Melbourne. Whilst team-mate Charles Leclerc shone again by putting his car on pole and then converting that to a victory, Sainz started P9 after misfortune in qualifying and then a sluggish start saw him mobbed by the midfield pack, with him eventually ending up in the gravel trap and out of the race.

Indeed, it was a really poor start for him and in his eagerness to regain ground, he lost control of his Ferrari and left the track without any points to show for his efforts.

Speaking after his retirement, he explained a late steering wheel change began the downward spiral for him on Sunday:

“What was clearly not right today we again had issues with the steering wheel, we had to change the steering wheel one minute before leaving for the formation lap and the steering wheel was not well positioned on some switches which meant at the start I was getting some anti-stall, which meant I started with hards and with anti-stall so was on the backfoot.

“Being in a rush to overtake and come back clearly, I did a mistake on the hard tyre when the tyre was probably not ready to be pushed and ready to overtake people so not great.

“We have not been perfect this weekend, it’s been a bit of disaster, so we need to learn from it and I was the first one to make a mistake today.”