Sainz blasts Monaco restart moves after race-ending hit

Carlos Sainz said his Williams was left “terminally damaged” by a chaotic late Monaco Grand Prix restart after Nico Hulkenberg hit him at the Fairmont Hotel Hairpin and Franco Colapinto then struck him at Portier, wiping out what he believed was a likely points finish.

Sainz said he had been in the fight for points when the race resumed after the red flag, running around 10th or 11th and just behind Alexander Albon. Instead, his race ended within a handful of corners. “Unfortunately, at the restart, some people decided to risk everything to try and get a point or two,” Sainz said after the race. He added that he was “the victim of people being very overoptimistic and doing a mistake that honestly was borderline unacceptable.”

He said the sequence began in the usual Monaco bottleneck at the hairpin. “Every year around Monaco you get to turn six [Fairmont], there’s a bunch-up, you need to lift, and you know you’re going to bump into a car in front because everyone’s trying to get through that corner,” he said. Sainz said Hulkenberg knocked him into the barrier there, and that the damage then left him vulnerable again two corners later when Colapinto made contact as he tried to move out of the way.

That first collision did bring a penalty. The stewards handed Hulkenberg 10 seconds, ruling that he “turned into car 55 [Sainz] in turn eight [sic] causing a collision.” They took no action over the later contact with Colapinto, concluding it was caused by Sainz’s unexpected change of direction as he tried to move right and off the racing line after the earlier hit.

Hulkenberg said the restart pack-up left him with nowhere to go. Speaking after the race, the Audi driver said, “If you do a restart with seven laps to go, of course it’s going to be heated.” He said he had to avoid Esteban Ocon, ended up “on the very inside” at the hairpin with “maximum lock,” and could not do more to avoid contact. “I couldn’t turn more and I can’t vanish,” he said.

Sainz was unconvinced by that explanation, pointing to the hairpin as a corner where drivers know they must slow dramatically because the field compresses. He said it was hard to understand how “with so much experience we’re still able to do this kind of mistake and throw my race away with someone fighting for whatever they were trying to fight.” For Williams, the incident turned a realistic points opportunity into a retirement in the closing laps.