McLaren cooling remains "a question mark" ahead of home race - Sainz

Carlos Sainz

McLaren cooling remains "a question mark" ahead of home race - Sainz

Sainz admits he "was not happy" about 70th Anniversary GP issues

Ewan Gale

Friday 14 August 2020 09:30

McLaren driver Carlos Sainz has admitted cooling issues suffered at Silverstone last weekend remain a concern ahead of the Spanish Grand Prix.

Sainz ran with a compromised aerodynamic package during the 70th Anniversary Grand Prix, having to open up areas of the car's bodywork to increase cooling to combat the searing temperatures.

With temperatures at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya forecasted to be similar this weekend, Sainz hopes the issue has been solved.

“We’re putting everything in place this weekend to try and solve the issue,” he said.

“From my side, I can tell you I was not happy about last week and carrying the deficit into qualifying and the race, which made my life a bit difficult.

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“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. It’s a bit of a question mark, I don’t know the answer yet.”

Cooling hasn't been the only issue Sainz has had to contend with this season. Pit-stop issues have cost him and the team multiple points-scoring opportunities, as well as a puncture in the British Grand Prix whilst running fourth in the dying stages.

The Spaniard is hopeful his luck will take a positive turn at his home Grand Prix.

“We’ve had technical failures," he added.

"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 pitstops.”

“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.”

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