According to AlphaTauri team manager Graham Watson, Red Bull advised Jos Verstappen and Carlos Sainz Snr that they “really had to take a step back” when their sons joined the squad back in 2016.
Ferrari boss Mattia Binotto has revealed that his team will consider offering Carlos Sainz a contract extension. The Spaniard’s future will be decided by the team over the winter break after the 2021 Formula 1 season came to a conclusion last weekend in Abu Dhabi. Carlos Sainz managed to put Ferrari on the podium in the dramatic season finale by finishing third. However, his achievement went unrecognized as all attention was on the championship battle between Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen. Sainz joined the duo on the podium after the race. “A podium to end a magic season… first season for me at Ferrari,” Sainz said. “P5 in the championship I think.” Ferrari commended the 27-year old for doing well in his debut season with the team amid struggling to keep up with his teammate Charles Leclerc. “Carlos had a great year,” Binotto confirmed. The Ferrari boss was also asked on whether they will be rewarding Carlos Sainz with a contract extension beyond 2022 after a successful 2021 season. “When we signed him a year ago, we said that the winter would be the time to talk and review everything that happened during the season,” said Binotto. “So we will do that in the winter. There will be a joint review of the entire season and we will talk about what our future will look like.” “When we signed Carlos, we wanted two good drivers in the race who are consistently scoring points. That’s been the case this season,” Binotto added. “I’m very happy with what Carlos has done this season, his first with Ferrari, which was not easy. But we signed him because he is a good driver who scores points and is able to learn.”
Valtteri Bottas and Carlos Sainz have also been summoned to the stewards after qualifying for the Qatar Grand Prix over alleged yellow flag infringements. This comes after Verstappen was summoned for the same issue. Verstappen qualified P2 in today’s session with a lap time of 1:21.282. However, it appears that the Dutchman kept driving through the final sector of the circuit whilst double-waved yellow flags were shown. AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly qualified fourth today, but he ended up with a puncture in his front right tyre after going over some curbs whilst going through the penultimate corner. Verstappen improved on his first lap of Q3 by a tenth of a second, which has raised suspicion as to whether or not he eased off the throttle. As a result, Verstappen has been summoned to the stewards for a potential infringement, but he will not be going to see them until 13:00 local time tomorrow on race day. Valtteri Bottas, who took third on your grid, is also under investigation. This was for an incident involving singled waved yellow flags. Carlos Sainz, who took seventh, is under investigation for the same thing. After Verstappen at 13:00 local time, Bottas will meet with the stewards tomorrow at 13:30, and Sainz will follow at 13:45. Speaking about this situation, Aston Martin’s Sebastian Vettel believes that the yellow flag was cancelled at the end of the third qualifying session “because Max was coming”. Vettel was also affected by the flags but is “pretty happy” as he managed to out-qualify Perez, Leclerc, and Ricciardo. He has said that: “I had the yellow flag in the last sector and then the yellow flag cleared, I guess, because Max was coming.” Double yellow flags mean that drivers should ‘abort the lap’ as a car is on the track, which Vettel did but he believes he could have been “the only one”. The flags were there for everyone’s safety and it was clearly shown that debris came off of Gasly’s car when the puncture was obtained. No more has been said at this time as to the outcome of this alleged infringement, so Verstappen and fans will have to wait to find out if a grid penalty will be given to the driver for Qatar Grand Prix race.
