Sainz hopeful ‘bad luck’ is behind him ahead of F1 Spanish GP

Carlos Sainz is hopeful McLaren has solved the issues which have curtailed his start to the 2020 Formula 1 season.

Sainz has been unable to match team-mate McLaren Lando Norris with the Brit picking up a podium in the season-opening Austrian Grand Prix.

His stuttering start hasn't been completely his own doing with a series of poor pit stops and a cooling issue in the 70th Anniversary Grand Prix severely impacting his chances of points finishes.

Speaking ahead of his home race in Barcelona, Sainz said: “We’ve had technical failures, we’ve had human error, we’ve had bad luck like in Hungary in traffic, and a technical error that we had in last week with a sensor breaking down - we’ve had all kinds of issues and now it’s time to solve them and get ourselves in the right path with the pit stops.

“We’ve spotted this weakness and it’s probably cost us quite a lot of points in the championship… So I'm sure Andreas Seidl and the team is putting a lot of effort in trying to improve this.”

Sainz is still unsure if McLaren has definitely fixed the cooling issue which affected his race at Silverstone last weekend. 

“We’re putting everything in place this weekend to try and solve the issue,” Sainz added. “From my side I can tell you I was not happy about last week and carrying deficit into qualifying and the race, which made my life a bit difficult.

“At the same time, at the end of the day, the team is trying to put everything they can together to try and solve this issue. We are not sure if I am going to have it or not tomorrow; we are sure we are trying to solve it as much as we can. Let’s see, let’s see, it’s a bit of a question mark, I don’t know the answer yet.”

“We need to switch the engine on, go on track and see if the problem is solved. I’m hopeful after changing so much stuff that this is going to go away and I can have a normal weekend.”