Carlos Sainz Has Now Earned Three Of His F1 Career Podiums Post-Race

Posted on October 25, 2023 | by Charley Williams If Carlos Sainz had a nickel for every time he’d been given an F1 podium post-race, he’d have three nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it’s happened three times, right?  After finishing 4th on the road at the United States GP at the weekend, Sainz was bumped up to the last podium spot after Lewis Hamilton was disqualified from the race. But this isn’t the first time Carlos has earned one of his 18 F1 podiums after the race had concluded, and we can bet it probably won’t be the last, either. BRAZIL 2019 What a way to celebrate your first F1 podium by not being on the podium… ish. On lap 66 of the Brazilian GP, Charles Leclerc and Sebastian Vettel got into a bit of a battle, causing them to collide and retire from the race with terminal damage. A safety car was brought out – and on the subsequent restart, Lewis Hamilton made contact with Alex Albon whilst trying to pass him at Turn 10, and despite losing P2 to Pierre Gasly, carried on to finish the race in P3. In his McLaren, Carlos Sainz finished fourth, just 2 seconds behind Lewis. Except, after the podium celebrations, Lewis was handed a five-second time penalty for causing a collision with Alex, and Sainz was promoted to P3 – his first-ever F1 podium, and McLaren’s first since Australia 2014. McLaren organised a late celebration with the team, and Carlos went up onto the podium with his trophy and some champagne. Kinda perfect, if you ask us. HUNGARY 2021 It was one of the most chaotic F1 races in recent years – no, really. A rainy start to the Hungarian GP led to the greatest strike in Wii Sports bowling you’ll ever see, as Valtteri Bottas and Lance Stroll left their braking a little too late into Turn 1, subsequently taking Lando, Charles, Perez and themselves out of the race and damaging Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo’s cars. The race was red-flagged, and on the formation lap of the restart, only race leader Lewis Hamilton headed to the actual grid on the intermediate tyres (strangest moment ever), with the rest of the field starting from the pitlane, choosing to change to slick tyres. He later pitted, leaving Esteban Ocon to lead the race (and eventually win it) with Vettel chasing close behind and Lewis struggling to get past a fiery Fernando Alonso – but when he did, he was only able to climb back up to P3. However, Sebastian was later disqualified in post-race scrutineering, as the stewards were unable to extract a sufficient amount of fuel from his Aston Martin. This promoted Lewis to P2 and Carlos to P3, and another post-race podium was born! UNITED STATES 2023 Well, we’re sure you know what happened here… With Hamilton chasing down the race win, he only managed to get to P2 before running out of laps. Carlos drove a great race and was let past his Ferrari teammate to try and chase down Lando for the last podium spot. He didn’t get there – but was later given P3 after Hamilton was disqualified after failing a post-race plank test. Cheers ‘en! ???? You know what they say in F1 – you have to make your own luck!