By Joey Barnes, Editor-in-Chief
AUSTIN, Texas – Carlos Sainz is ready to begin the next chapter of his Formula One career with Renault for this weekend’s United States Grand Prix at Circuit of the Americas.
The 23-year-old Spaniard moved over to the Enstone-based squad after being at Scuderia Toro Rosso since 2015. Currently sitting ninth in the championship standings, Sainz put in a career-best effort of fourth at Singapore last month.
The move will give Sainz four races with his new team in preparation for 2018. However, looking towards this weekend he was optimistic about making his first start with them at the 3.427-mile road course.
“I’m actually particularly excited to make the debut with the Renault car in a circuit like Austin because you have every single kind of corner that you enjoy in Formula One in this kind of track,” said Sainz.
“You have a long straight and then a big braking zone, you have a lot of long high-speed corners, high-speed changes of direction, medium-speed, high-speed. Because of that, I think it’s a great circuit for me to get to know the car in all these areas. Apart from that it’s one of my favorite grand prix of the season in the end.
“You know you have great vibes surrounding the whole grand prix, with the concert, with the fans here are particularly special and I’m going to enjoy the weekend because of that.”
Although he hopes to be equally as quick as teammate Nico Hulkenberg, Sainz is going to be patient throughout the process.
“I think my main target has to be to go session by session,” said Sainz.
“I’m the first one who wants to be on the pace straight away, but I cannot get too excited about that. I need to cover all the procedures, all the steps that I want to take, little by little, to get to know the car. I need to adapt myself to the car and I need to adapt the car to myself at the same time.
“That takes a bit of time and I’m going to go step by step and hopefully get there as soon as possible.”
