Sainz reveals ‘awkward’ Perez meeting after Baku crash

Carlos Sainz has revealed the “awkward” meeting he endured with Sergio Perez following their coming together at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix last weekend.

The pair clashed on the penultimate lap while racing for third place and were eliminated from the race after suffering terminal damage.

The stewards judged that neither driver was predominantly to blame for the incident with both issued a warning following a hearing.

Straight after the incident, Perez approached Sainz’s car as was evidently upset with his peer – however Sainz asserted he couldn’t hear what the Red Bull driver was saying. 

“Honestly speaking, I can’t remember if he touched my helmet or not,” Sainz told media including RacingNews365.

“I always take a bit of time to get out of the car, because I need to do all my belts. I always take my time, and I think he used the time to agitatedly come to me to say something which, by the way, I couldn’t hear.“

The collision warranted a trip to the medical centre at the Baku City Circuit, where both were cleared after precautionary checks.

While they were sat in the centre they discussed the incident – leaving them to rue a missed opportunity of a podium result.

“We discussed [it] after, we were awkwardly sat next to each other for 20 minutes in the medical centre, both with the heart rate monitor and controlling our vitals,” Sainz reflected.

“We were looking at each other and saying, ‘mate, what the fuck happened there?’ And we’re like, ‘I don’t know, but I promise I didn’t do anything bad to you, I didn’t close you off’.

“We were having this dialogue and trying to analyse what happen and suddenly after the meeting we go ‘this sport is so shit sometimes. How can we be here and missing out on the podium?’ 

“We had the podium. Charles was dying on his hard tyres out there. We were probably both going have a go at him, and we were both sitting there like, ‘how on earth did we manage to not finish on the podium?’

“In the end, we kind of joked about it, so no hard feelings with each other.”