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<\/p>\nWritten by Kavi Khandelwal<\/p>\n
Carlos Sainz and Kimi Antonelli have offered conflicting perspectives on the Lap seven collision that ended the Williams driver’s 2025 United States Grand Prix and left the Mercedes rookie to salvage a P13 finish.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The incident at Turn 15 brought a premature end to what was shaping up to be a strong weekend for Sainz, who had started the Grand Prix from P9 after an impressive P3 finish in Saturday’s sprint.<\/p>\n
Sainz, who had already successfully passed Oliver Bearman, was attempting a similar overtake on the P7-starting Antonelli when the two made contact, forcing the Williams into retirement.<\/p>\n
The Spaniard felt the move was on and that he was forced into a race-ending error by his rival\u2019s unexpectedly robust defence.<\/p>\n
“I was on a very good pace very good feeling with a car and I felt like it was a good opportunity to make a move,” Sainz said. “Unfortunately with Kimi didn’t work out in the same way.”<\/p>\n
Sainz explained his reasoning for the subsequent crash, which saw him lock his brakes and hit the Mercedes: “I felt like Kimi was quite a bit more aggressive than Ollie on the defence and on the turning to the corner and that they kind of scared me at the time… which forced me to to hit the brakes hard to avoid a collision in the end.”<\/p>\n
He added that while he ultimately caused the contact, the incident appeared more dramatic from the outside than it felt from within the cockpit.<\/p>\n
“Looks a lot worse from the outside than what it felt from the inside,” Sainz said. “And yeah in the end. Yeah, it’s a shame because we’re very quick today.”<\/p>\n
The Williams driver lamented the “missed opportunity,” acknowledging he could have played it safe and settled for P8 but instead chose to fight for a better result.<\/p>\n
“It’s always the same with racing, you know, I could have played it safe being in p8 not try and move on Kimi and follow him to the flag and bring four points to the team and celebrate that,” he stated.<\/p>\n
“In the end when you’re racing you’re always one more [want more] you always go for it,” Sainz continued. “I went for it with Ollie and it worked perfectly fine. It’s a corner where I’ve done multiple overtakes in the past and I’ve never crashed and this time around with Kimmy… Yeah, it didn’t quite work out.”<\/p>\n
Antonelli, however, saw the incident differently. The rookie placed the blame firmly on Sainz, stating that he had tried to leave space for a car he did not believe was ever going to make the corner.<\/p>\n
“Yeah, it’s a shame, it’s a pity,” Antonelli said post-race. “I didn’t think he was going to make the corner anyway, and I tried to avoid hitting the apex just to give him a bit more space, but I ended up getting taken out, so it’s a shame.”<\/p>\n
Despite being hit and his race compromised, Antonelli was able to continue and was positive about his car’s performance over the weekend, noting his pace felt strong when he was running in clean air.<\/p>\n
“I think pace was pretty good,” Antonelli said. “I had a few laps in clean air as well… Still, it was difficult out there with the deck [deg], which was very high. But yeah, now we focus on Mexico.”<\/p>\n
The collision was noted by the stewards and investigated after the race, with Sainz potentially facing a grid penalty for the upcoming Mexico Grand Prix.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Written by Kavi Khandelwal Carlos Sainz and Kimi Antonelli have offered conflicting perspectives on the Lap seven collision…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":226086,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":["post-226085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226085\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/226086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}