Panicked Sainz says ‘Oh my God’ after near-miss with Lando Norris in Austin

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    Carlos Sainz said "Oh my God" after a close run-in with former team-mate Lando Norris during a practice session at the Austin Grand Prix.

    Ferrari ace Sainz was driving a hot lap as Norris was guiding his McLaren more sedately around the track to get his tyres into their optimum temperature. But as Sainz came roaring through the COTA esses, Norris failed to move too far enough away from the racing line, forcing the Spaniard to bail out.

    While F1 drivers are renowned for sending angry messages over the team radio, Sainz sounded more panicked than anything else. Oh my god, whoa," he said, before adding: "Lando there. I think he didn't see me, but we nearly crashed."

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    Sainz, who missed out on the Qatar Grand Prix two weeks ago due to a significant fuel leak in his Ferrari, will hope to at least start this Sunday's race.

    "I've been trying to 'recover' from Qatar, not so much physically, because I didn't race, but mentally from not being able to take part in that race," he told reporters in Austin. "Which, in hindsight, actually, if there was a race to miss it was probably Qatar. Looking back it looked like a good one to maybe skip. But now in Austin, I'm ready to focus on what matters, at least trying to get hopefully back on the podium this weekend."

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    "We've changed a lot of parts in the car to try to obviously correct the issue that affected us in Qatar. We are trying also to find solutions in the long-term, not only in the short-term, because it's definitely something that we are not happy [about] and we've also had issues in the past."

    "So, it's a bit of a headache that is giving us this fuel tank [problem] now and then. But we will try and put it back together this weekend and, hopefully, there shouldn't be any issues anytime soon."

    Ferrari have a 79-point lead over McLaren in the constructors' championship, but the gap is closing with the Woking-based outfit scoring well in recent races. As long as his team suffers no more reliability issues, Sainz is confident that his team can do enough to "keep them behind".

    He further commented: "[That] doesn't mean that they are not going to beat us. I think they're going to beat us in most of the races from here to the end of the season if all things align, because they do have a very quick car nowadays and they look to be the only ones that can sometimes bother Red Bull, and in a track like Singapore, where maybe it's more us [who were quicker]."

    * This article was crafted with the help of an AI tool, which speeds up Daily Star's editorial research. An editor reviewed this content before it was published. You can report any errors to [email protected]

    • Ferrari
    • F1
    • Lando Norris

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