Daniil Kvyat, Carlos Sainz Jnr, Alexander Albon, Monaco, 2019

Sainz made ‘best pass of my F1 career’ on Toro Rosso pair

2019 Monaco Grand Prix

Posted on

| Written by and

Carlos Sainz Jnr says his first-lap pass on Daniil Kvyat in the Monaco Grand Prix was the best of his F1 career so far.

The McLaren driver went around the outside of Alexander Albon and Daniil Kvyat as the field climbed towards Massenet and rounded the left-hander at the start. That put Sainz on course to equal his best finish in Monaco with sixth.

“A good amount of points this weekend,” he said. “It feels particularly good because we went through some difficulties at the beginning of the weekend and we just built it up, put a good lap in quali when it counted and after that I got a really good start off the line.

“I managed to pass the two Toro Rossos around the outside of turn three which was probably the best move of my career in F1 until now. And then put some good laps in, got the pit stop timing just right and P6.”

McLaren chose not to pit Sainz during the Safety Car period, which helped him gain further places from Daniel Ricciardo and Kevin Magnussen. Sainz also set a series of quick laps to prevent Kvyat get back in front of him when the Toro Rosso driver pitted.

“We knew I had some pace left after the Safety Car. That’s why we didn’t pit, we knew we had tyre left. We put together a strong 10, 12 laps after the Safety Car. We opened a good gap and then we pitted just when we had to pit.

“It was tight and I had to defend, I think I did fastest lap of the race right after trying to defend the over-cut of Daniil Kvyat. It was just great timing, great call and just good pace when it counted.”

Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free

2019 F1 season

Browse all 2019 F1 season articles

Author information

Gabriele Koslowski
Gabriele Koslowski first began following Formula 1 during the early noughties, and is a director of a Belgian motorsport media company. During the past...
Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

Got a potential story, tip or enquiry? Find out more about RaceFans and contact us here.

15 comments on “Sainz made ‘best pass of my F1 career’ on Toro Rosso pair”

  1. Sonny Crockett
    27th May 2019, 9:12

    The early signs this weekend were that Haas had leap-frogged them but, at the moment, McLaren do seem to be the “best of the rest”.

    Fingers-crossed they can keep building momentum…

  2. Mclaren really benefitting from having two competitive drivers and a good all round car.

  3. I thought Sainz’s double overtake on Toro Rosso was pretty awesome. Given how difficult it is to overtake on this circuit, pulling a double overtake on a spot which is a little dangerous and bumpy is actually quite incredible. I saw the onboard footage, and I would have to call it the best overtake of the season so far.

    1. georgeboole (@)
      27th May 2019, 11:23

      I have driven there in a normal car and I can tell you it looked scary. Great job from Sainz.
      I just hope he won’t sound like Alonso every race where it is the best of his life.

    2. isaac (@invincibleisaac)
      27th May 2019, 13:38

      @todfod It definitely was a gutsy move! Shame it wasn’t shown during the race though. So far that is certainly one of the overtakes of the year so far, but for me Leclerc’s overtake on Grosjean, and Norris’ pass on the Red Bull in Bahrain are up there as well.

    1. How good of FOM to allow these clips to be shared.

  4. Sainz put a flawless weekend. Reaching Q3 and finishing P6 best of the rest. And that thrilling start was awesome! Kudos to him.

  5. Yet another piece of driving we missed during the race. Maybe the show isn’t that bad, it just needs better broadcasting. It’s ridiculous that we see this images after the race is finished, like albons charge through the field in China.

    MotoGP shows onboards while keeping the race footage on the big screen. Don’t know why F1 doesn’t do the same, among other things which are standard these days!

    1. @fer-no65 Yes, indeed. Neither this passing move nor the close call with a couple of marshals was shown on the world feed. Sainz’s pass, of course, happened out of frame as the live footage focused on the front-runners at that point since it was lap one, but surprisingly it wasn’t even shown among the replay views of the start a bit later, and the same with the close call of Perez. The live footage focused on a different part of the track, but not even a single replay of it was shown later.

    2. isaac (@invincibleisaac)
      27th May 2019, 13:36

      @fer-no65 Yeah I agree, coverage so far this year seems especially bad. I was quite annoyed when not even 30 seconds into yesterday’s race the camera cut to a shot of Toto Wolff, just as the cars were approaching the hairpin on lap 1. I can understand cutting to that mid-way through a dull race but why lap 1!??!

      Sainz’s pass was very impressive, but again I was disappointed not to see it on the Channel 4 highlights, much like a lot of Albon’s overtakes in China, as you say. I do agree that the onboards and replays are much better with MotoGP

    3. Absolutely, the work of the broadcasting team is a bit of a letdown. We haven’t seen many great moves, the highlight among them might be Norris on Gasly in Bahrain.

    4. The only benefit of LeClerc’s retirement was that the broadcast feed director had to focus on other drivers. As much as I really do like Charles, the director seemed to think he was the only car in the race until he retired. Yes, his action did merit some coverage, but not at the expense of all the other action. The feed seemed to focus on LeClerc all around the track even when not much was going on with him.

  6. Why did Kvyat move out of the way? To avoid Sainz driving into him?

    1. I have an opinion
      28th May 2019, 15:06

      Kvyat had to tiptoe behind the senior team’s car #10 and had already let Gasly through in the first corner. Sainz capitalised spectacularly on the Toro Rossos’ reluctance to race each other or Red Bull Racing.

Comments are closed.