It was a rollercoaster of a race for Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz at the Russian Grand Prix. He started the race in P2, which quickly turned to the race lead after the first corner. Unfortunately, he could not hold on to his lead after being passed by Lando Norris.

He pitted early and then was struggling on the hard tires throughout the race, but then the rain came. Sainz was one of the drivers who got the timing to switch to inters right; this resulted in him finishing P3 at Sochi.

While it certainly gave the Spaniard his third podium of the season, it also ended an unfortunate curse – he only finishes on the podium if Charles Leclerc DNFs.

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Carlos Sainz summarizes his race at the Russian GP

This is Sainz’s fifth podium in F1, and for his first four top-3 finishes came at races where teammate Leclerc got a DNF. Fortunately, the Ferrari duo seems to have broken that curse. While the Monegasque driver did crash this time as well, he managed to finish in P14.

As reported by GPFans, the Spanish driver is happy about his result, but that doesn’t mean he is satisfied with it.

“I got a good launch, and that was the priority not to lose position too much to George, then I was able to get back behind Lando and do a bit of a send into turn 2, which worked perfectly, and then graining came.

“We went early onto the hard and we had to do a lot of management. Then the rain came at the worst possible time when my hard tires were going away and we boxed at exactly the right time and we managed to get back into P3,” said Sainz.

The podium takes him above his teammate in the driver’s standings. Sainz is currently P6 behind Perez and ahead of Leclerc, as he now has 112.5 points to Leclerc’s 104. He is just 7.5 behind Perez, now in the standings as Checo is on 120 points.

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