There are no hard feelings between Carlos Sainz and Daniel Ricciardo after the pair clashed on the opening lap of the Formula 1 Emilia Romagna Grand Prix.
The Ferrari driver found himself pitched into the gravel at the Variante Tamburello after contact from Ricciardo, ending his race almost as it began.
The McLaren driver was in turn tagged by Valtteri Bottas, damaging the diffuser on the MCL36, compromising the remainder of his afternoon.
Following the race, in which the he finished last, the Australian headed to the Ferrari hospitality suite where he offered his apologies to Sainz.
“It raises Daniel as an athlete and as a sportsman,” the Spaniard said of the gesture when asked about it by Speedcafe.com.
“Immediately after the race, you could see he’s had a tough one, but the first thing that he did, he was coming to the Ferrari box to apologise to me.
“There were the whole mechanics in here with me, and we all thanked him for the gesture.
“So that’s why there’s no hard feelings with Daniel, because what happened to him could happen to anyone out there today.
“Unfortunately, it had to happen to me, which I’m coming from the crash in Melbourne.”
Imola was the second difficult race in succession for Sainz after he spun out of the Australian Grand Prix on Lap 2.
The key difference however is that, while in Melbourne it was a driver error, this weekend he was the innocent party.
“In Australia I was completely at fault, and here, after reviewing the footage, I think I couldn’t have done anything more to give Daniel more space,” Sainz reasoned.
“So two completely different incidents with very similar outcome, which means you end up not doing any of the 60 laps of the race which, at the moment for me, would be very useful.
“The result doesn’t even hurt that much if you compare it to losing so much track time and losing so many laps in this car.
“The tough thing is that they come in a consecutive manner, because over the season, there’s always going to be one race where you do a mistake, and there’s always going to be one race where you get bumped out.
“For me, unfortunately it has happened consecutively, and it’s why it hurts more and it’s tougher, but hopefully we get them done nice and early in the season and now we can start focusing on the rest of the year.”
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