French GP: Carlos Sainz keeping positive despite championship hit in Austria

Carlos Sainz has remained upbeat ahead of the French Grand Prix despite his title hopes taking a big hit last time out at the Austrian Grand Prix.

Sainz was building some decent momentum before Spielberg with him winning in Britain and also challenging for victory the race before in Montreal.

Indeed, he was quick in Austria as well with him looking set to take second place off of Max Verstappen before the Ferrari engine in his car expired in a fiery display.

Another dose of bad luck for Sainz this season, then, and he finds himself a full 75 points off of championship leader Verstappen as we enter the second half of the campaign.

He remains upbeat, though, and is taking the positives from the form he has shown and how long there remains in the championship with another 11 races to come:

“Not only the team [but] I had momentum too, fighting for the win in Canada, winning in Silverstone, fighting for the win again in Austria and being in the mix in the last few races.

“I was feeling like I was getting my championship hopes back up and suddenly the 0 comes at not a very good time but the good thing is we can win every single race that we go to if we nail it, and the car is super strong and keeps improving every race.

“We keep finding lap time with it and there’s still half a season to go so that’s good news.”

Whether Sainz can challenge for victory this weekend remains to be seen but he will feel as though there is a very good chance of that.

The Ferrari is a fast car no matter the circuit, but it’s its reliability that has caused the issues and still needs resolving.