Sainz: Ferrari had 'nothing to lose' in Abu Dhabi Safety Car gamble

Carlos Sainz has attempted to justify Ferrari's unconventional Abu Dhabi Grand Prix strategy which was dependent on a Safety Car.

The Spaniard suffered a heavy crash minutes into the second practice session on Friday before being eliminated in the first segment of qualifying, starting 16th and on the Hard tyres.

Unusually, he then pitted for a second set of Hards, locking him into a two-stop, and pitted on Lap 57 of 58 to fulfil the requirement to run two types of compounds.

He finished 18th and slipped from fourth to seventh in the Drivers', as Ferrari also failed to overhaul Mercedes for second in the Constructors'.

Reflecting on the disappointing weekend, Sainz believed the Scuderia had "nothing to lose" following his poor qualifying.

“We started on the Hard expecting the car to help us do a one-stop,” Sainz told media including RacingNews365.

“I feel like we've seen many times this year, whenever we started on Harder compounds with our car we struggled a lot.

“We had nothing to lose starting in P16 and we gave it a go but again it didn't work for us. The harder compound at the beginning of the race with the dirty air, I was just sliding.

“It just didn't work for us. And then once we saw that we had very little chance of scoring points we stayed out for a Safety Car and it didn’t work out.”

Sainz issues Ferrari rally call

Ferrari missed out on second place in the Constructors' Champion to Mercedes, who pipped the Italian squad by three points.

With Sainz's season ending in disappointment, the Spaniard has called on Ferrari to regroup and analyse its issues ahead of next year's campaign.

“The last two weekends, this last weekend in general, hasn't gone how I expected or how we wanted to finish the year,” he said.

“Honestly [I'm] very disappointed and obviously not happy given how close it was in the end with the Constructors’ Championship.

“We’re going to have to sit down analyse and see what we could have done better today and what was going on.

“Clearly, the pace this weekend and the overall feeling with the car wasn't good.”